Day 102 - Saturday, August 7

Cowboy camping near Sky Lakes Trail Junction (mile 1790.4). Walked 39.8 miles today.

Frank's alarm went off at 4:30 this morning and we hit the ground running at 5:30.

After a brief stint of headlamp hiking, we hiked up a 6-mile, well-graded climb where our only views were of lots of living trees and lots of deadfall trees. There's a significantly higher number of downed trees through this section than others that we've passed through. Easy to understand why the west goes up in flames each year with all this dry fuel on the forest floor.

We passed some berries that Frank thought were edible, but we can't check because we want to conserve the battery on our phones. Frank's battery pack charger died last night and so we're both using mine to charge our phones.

We kept hiking through more woods until we reached South Brown Mountain Shelter. Here, we met Dirty Knuckles and Prime. After getting water, we all hiked out together and a few miles later, reached the Brown Mountain lava field. Although well constructed through the rocks, it was pretty painful to walk on the uneven rocks.

After half a mile, the novelty of all these new rocks had worn off and I looked at the map only to realize that we had another 6.5 miles of this stuff. Frank's feet really hurt through this section and she said she was in the most pain she'd been in so far in the trail.

(In a couple of days we'd run into a hiker who does trail design and he would tell us that this section was one of the most expensive parts of the trail as all the red rock had to be helicoptered in). We got some views of Mt. McLaughlin as we hiked toward the highway.

Upon finally reaching the surprisingly busy road, we crossed and came upon some trail magic: hot dogs, apples, soda, and other assorted foods. We hung out here for about 30 minutes before pushing on, determined to meet our goal. We hiked through a bunch more trees and about 6.5 miles before our next water source, I pushed ahead so I would have more time to cook before our final push to camp. Half a mile later, I realized I didn't have a lighter and couldn't light my stove without Frank's lighter. I kept going though because I figured I could borrow someone else's.

After some uninteresting tree-filled miles, I reached the spring and got water. Rambler (who we've come to learn is quite a character) and a few others were here and as I set up my stove and was about to ask for a lighter from someone, Frank rolled in right on cue and I was able to use hers.

After dinner, we pushed another 5 miles through the twilight and into the night. Finally, at 9:15, we arrived at our camp for the night and set up in the dark.

We're camping alone for the first time in a very long time. Frank put in her ear plugs to try to get better sleep tonight and told me I was in charge of being on the lookout for bears tonight. Took me a bit to fall asleep after that, but I did after a grueling nearly 16-hour and 40-mile day.