Apparently, we are the slackers of the group we camped with last night, as everyone was already packed up and gone when we got up at 6:00AM. In the end it evens out, as we take fewer breaks then others so we end up catching and passing those that got up earlier.
We had beautiful views of Mt. Adams for the beginning of the day today. The air was fairly smoky due to forest fires in the area, which leads the sun to look like an orange orb in the sky. It was pretty surreal. We had to plan our day around water sources, or at least be cognizant of where the nearest water was all day, as this part of Washington is fairly dry–they have had almost 90 days without rain here which is very unusual.
We leapfrogged with Jackpot and Storm, Fresh, and Nimbles throughout the day. For some reason my leg behind my knee started to hurt today–sort of where the top of my calf muscle is located. I tried to do some stretches to help it. We took lunch after about 19 miles and then set out to do the final miles of the day.
It was pretty hot out so about 4 miles from where we intended to camp tonight, we took a short side trail to Sheep Lake. It was quite beautiful and clear with a nice sandy bottom. Wolf Bird and I went in, which is a big deal for me as I always think going in a lake sounds refreshing until I get there and feel how cold the water is. The same thing happened today, but Wolf Bird persuaded me to go in. I haven’t showered in a while so I felt extra dirty and decided it was probably smart to go in to rinse off. I went in with my clothes on and did my best to ring out the dirt. As hard as it was to force myself to go under (I took probably 10 minutes of slowly lowering myself into the water centimeter by centimeter), I felt much cleaner and much more refreshed afterward. However, I was also cold! The sun was starting to set and it wasn’t as warm as earlier in the day.
We got back to hiking and it took me a while to warm back up walking in wet clothes. It was an amazingly beautiful section. We are now in Goat Rocks Wilderness which is one of the notoriously beautiful sections of trail and it did not disappoint. Unfortunately that means that many weekenders (even though it wasn’t the weekend, mostly this is a term for people just out for a night or two) were around too. We got up to the top of Cispus Pass and could see all around us and were shocked to see maybe 30+ people camped below!! Ugh, it was growing dark and this meant we’d likely have to hike on a bit further to find a camping spot. Oh well, luckily it was beautiful . We walked past some amazing waterfalls and eventually ran into Fresh, Nimbles, Jackpot and Storm. They were setting up camp and told us of a flat spot they’d seen nearby. We set up our tent and had dinner as it became dark. I was excited for tomorrow as we’d be going over the Knife’s Edge, which was a narrow section of trail with amazing views… and we were meeting up with Steven, Chicory’s (our friend from the AT) brother.
