Day 127 (24 August) - Mile 1615.98 - 1639.10

Campsite at mile 1615.98 to Campsite on Cold Spring Creek

I heard the brothers wake up at 5:30 AM as they said they would, but then they went back to sleep till 6:00 AM when we all got up. They quickly packed up their bags and left before I was even out of the tent. After our typical morning ritual, we were ready to hike by 7:22 AM.

Ready to hike

This morning we have some climbing, but after lunch the trail will descend 3,000 feet.

First for the climbing:

Self-portrait "Taking a break from climbing"

Views on the way up:

Wow!

Beautiful

The trail climbs

We planned to stop for lunch at a trail crossing and got there to find no great place to rest. We saw a patch of trees and cleaned up the sticks and made it work. We left lunch at 3:00 PM with 10.15 miles to hike to our planned campsite...OY!

Right after lunch the trail continued climbing just a bit more:

The climbing PCT

And then it started diving the 4000 feet to our campsite.

Check out this amazing three-forked tree by a spring that we collected and filtered water by:

Posing on a cool tree

Looking up at tree #1

Looking up at tree #2

On the way down this random PCT post was on the side of the trail:

PCT sign of the day

We made it to the Cold Spring trailhead just before 6:00 PM with 4.14 miles to go. I was pretty done for the day, so 4.14 miles seems like a lot.

Self-portrait "Done, but not"

My feet started having issues so we stopped for a quick break with 3 miles to go. We hit the trail and I just took a deep breathe and hiked down the 1.816 feet with no break. Somehow I was able to get down there in 50 minutes meaning I averaged 3.66 miles per hour!!

Needless to say, I was exhausted when I got down there. I quickly set up my tent and ate dinner.  Stitch showed up, who we met a few days ago and asked if we saw Blackout. Wow...I haven't seen Blackout since just after Mount Whitney. He finally showed up and we had a nice reunion and then I had to get into my tent since I was so done.

I finished up yesterday's blog and stated today's blog and just couldn't get through it, so here I am the next day finishing up yesterday's blog. Hopefully I will be able to get to tonight's blog.

Oh...I was so tired last night that I forgot to take a picture of my tent, so here is a picture of where I pitched my tent. There is a stream close by, so the sound of the water was awesome.

Tentsite for the night.