Day 64 - Wednesday, June 30

Tenting at an exposed site on a ridge (mile 1066.7).  Walked 25.3 miles today.

Didn't sleep well, as I was up for a few hours during the night.  I left camp at 6:30 am ahead of Frank and began a climb up to a saddle.

The trail then crossed into the next valley where several sets of switchbacks led the trail farther down.

It was here that I got a strong smell of smoke.  We could smell it a little yesterday, but it was much more apparent today.

I took a couple of breaks and used my satellite communicator to contact home and find out where the fire eas.  As I approached the road at Ebbetts Pass, I saw one of the most wonderful sights to a hiker: trail magic.  Chipmunk, the trail angel running the magic invited me over, washed my hands, and gave me the rundown.  I grabbed a banana to eat and sat down with a couple of hijers who were already there.  Only a couple minutes later, Frank rolled in and Chipmunk fixed us eggs with chili and some bread.  I also got a cup of orange juice and Frank got some chocolate milk.  While sitting here, Frank said that she wanted to get to mile 1066 today.  After some quick mental math, I realized that meant a 25-mile day.  Normally out mileage for the next day is something we discuss each evening, but we didn't get around to it last night since I went to bed so early.  Well I'm always up for a big mile day so I heartily agreed.  We hung out here and over nearly an hour, many more hikers filtered in.

After a while, Frank and I started up the trail again.  Along the way, Frank was raving about the chocolate milk that she had at the trail magic and I told her that I'd never had chocolate milk as I can't remember ever having drank it.  Well, apparently this was the wrong thing to say to a girl who grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. She about had an aneurysm and turned us around to go back to the trail magic.  We instead continued on, her in utter disbelief, me in blissful naivety.  In my defense on this, I've drank tons of milk in my life, just none of it chocolate...

We walked through several meadows in which one could (as Frank remarked) spin around while singing "The hills are alive...".

Eventually, we crossed a ridge and we got what I had been hoping for all day: cell service.  I sat on a beautiful hillside meadow and did what I came out to nature to do: stare at my phone for an hour.  Actually I did some chores that I had been hoping to do at Kennedy Meadows North including ordering a new tent so that I don't have to deal with the broken zipper on the one I currently have.  Chores done, we set off down the mountain for our final 10 miles of the day with storm clouds and thunder not too far behind us.

We hiked fast down the mountain, storm clouds still behind us.

We passed through some relatively easy terrain, allowing us to hike quickly.  Frank caught up on the news in this section and listened to a couple of podcasts that she had download with the cell service.  I watched the clouds which were slowly gaining on us.  Finally, we made the final ascent to the place we had planned to camp.

The site was a little exposed (and the storm clouds more ominous) and so we went 0.1 miles up the trail to see if that site was any better.  It was more exposed and there were already done tents here, so we went back to the original site and set up our tents.  Right as we were finishing, the rain began and we dove in our tents.  After a couple minutes the rain lightened and I made the 10-foot dash over to Frank's tent so we could chat and make plans for tomorrow while we ate dinner together.  The rain started back up and this time brought some pea-sized hail with it.  It let up after a short time and we survived another thunderstorm.  I went back to my tent and crashed hard after such a long day.