Day 129 (26 August) - Mile 1658.03 - 1677.67

Campsite at mile 1658.03 to Campsite by unpaved road 47N81

The temperature was perfect last night allowing me to sleep very well. I've got a crazy foot fungus or something going on, so I kept my feet outside of the sleeping bag to allow them to air out. With the nice temperature that wasn't a problem.

I awoke right at 6:00 AM and Zeth was gone by the time I got out of the tent. Lots of hikers out here get up and go way earlier than us. We might actually have to start waking up earlier to cover the longer miles in Oregon, but I'm not ready to discuss waking up at 5-something.

Somehow we all ate breakfast, got our stuff together, and were ready to hike at 7:11 AM...this may be a record for the three of us.

Ready to hike in record time.

Today's hike starts off continuing the climb we started yesterday. We have about 4 miles left and over 2,300 feet of climbing. The first 2 miles were really steep, so it was good that we were fresh and there was a cool breeze at the start of the day.

The morning climb

The climb was terrible, but the scenery was incredible.

Incredible scenery

And the climbing just continued...

Climbing, climbing, and more climbing

We made it near the top where there was a view of a small lake that was shaped like a lily pad and full of lily pads. I said to Share Bear to check out the lily pad lake. A few minutes later there was a side trail to the lake with a sign saying "Lily Pad Lake."  What a great name.

View of Lily Pad Lake

Onward we hiked to our lunch stop:

Share Bear leading the way

We stopped for lunch by an unpaved road and an awesome piped spring that put out delicious, ice cold water. While eating lunch Blackout showed up followed by Doc and Bigfoot. We somehow mismanaged our time because we didn't leave from lunch until 2:50 PM and we still had 12.5 miles to go to our planned campsite.

Self-portrait "Time flies during breaks"

We hiked hard and made it to Bear Dog Spring where we stopped to collect and filter water. While there Blackout showed up followed by Doc and Bigfoot and then a Decaf who is hiking southbound showed up. He is a Brit living in Australia and is hiking from Canada to Mexico. After much taking we realized that one hour has passed and it was after 6:00 PM. We still had 7 miles to get to our planned campsite. Great...some more mismanaged time.

More hard hiking for one hour allowed us to cover just over 3 miles, but it was now just after 7:00 PM and we knew we wouldn't mKe 4 more miles before dark.

Share Bear contemplating the late day

We looked at the map and saw a road one mile further and decided to stop there instead of hiking 4 more miles. When we arrived at the unpaved road we were lucky to see a nice, flat campsite that could easily fit us so we stopped right at 7:30 PM, three miles short of our goal...oh well, we will make up the miles tomorrow.

Speaking about tomorrow...we will be crossing over into Oregon around lunchtime meaning tonight is our last night in California...unbelievable!!

Well...it is now 10:00 PM so I think I will get to sleep and enjoy this last California night. 

Home for the night