In the night we had a classic Wolf Bird/Sherpa situation where I (Sherpa) woke up Wolf Bird in the middle of the night because of animal happenings. I smelled a super strong skunk stench around 3AM and was concerned a skunk was in our campsite. I had my leftover chicken tenders in the vestibule of our tent so I was worried the smell was attracting a skunk. Wolf Bird was of course not too happy to be woken up for this. We put the food inside our tent so nothing could get into it and went back to sleep with no issues.
We got up around 6:30AM and didn’t get going until close to 8:00AM. We passed a couple from Knoxville (the guy, Yote as in Coyote, hiked the AT previously) and also a German/Swiss couple. It was nice flat easy trail for a good portion of the morning. We saw some prairie dogs (or so says Wolf Bird) and also a woman riding a horse down the trail (not for a thru hike).
We started climbing up and of course that is when the temperature also started to rise. The sun is just so strong! I am a person who sits in the shade at the pool or beach, so walking in the blazing hot sun all day is pretty tough. I have to stop and take brief breaks whenever I find the smallest amount of shade just to get a brief relief from the sun’s intensity.
We decided to try taking a siesta in the middle of the day, where we sit and take a long break to wait out the hottest part of the day. We had decided in advance to take our siesta at a water source, Kitchen Creek. Unfortunately, when we got there around noon we discovered Kitchen Creek had very little shade. It was a nice cold flowing creek about 100 feet down below the trail, but was surrounded by exposed rock all around.
Wolf Bird kindly walked upstream a bit, passed a rattlesnake in the grass, and actually found a bit of shade around the bend of the creek! We laid out our groundsheet and posted up for the afternoon under a tree. Unfortunately, the shade kept moving as the sun moved across the sky, so we had to keep adjusting where we sat. To top it off, we were on sloped ground so it was a bit difficult to get comfortable. Wolf Bird took a nice nap and made some instant mashed potatoes which he shared with me and we lounged for a loooong time, until about 5PM. Wolf Bird took a dip in the creek just before we headed out and reported that it was very refreshing.
We finally set out to hike our final miles of the day. Lucky for us, most of these miles were on the north side of the mountains we were walking along, which meant the sun had already sunk low enough in the sky so that we were walking in shade. It felt so nice to have relief from the sun and the air temperature was also cooler which made for nicer walking.
We got to our next water source at Fred Creek Canyon and found a bunch of thru hikers camping there. We opted to continue on a few miles as we both were feeling good and there was still an hour or so until sunset. We walked until we got to a beautiful ridge line with a nice flat tentsite. We set up our tent and cooked dinner as we watched the sun set and stars start to appear. It was very beautiful.
