Day 130 - Saturday, September 4

Tenting at a spring (mile 2352.8). Walked 29.2 miles today.

We got up and rushed to get ready as Frank got a message that her friend Tiffany was camping in the area and would be at Chinook Pass (a little over a mile down the trail) by 6:45.

We crossed a very nice bridge over the road and went to the parking lot where Tiffany and her friend Jeff were waiting for us.

Tiffany had brought us breakfast. I had a slice of apple cake and Frank had some bread pudding. While we were sitting there eating, a guy who was in his car across the parking lot got out and asked us for help. He'd driven his front tire off the pavement and there was a huge dropoff there. His axle was on the ground. Jeff got the jack from his car and used it to prop up the car while I piled rocks under the front tire until it was level with the pavement.

We then lowered the jack and the car rolled back onto the pavement easily. After this excitement, we packed up and Tiffany and Jeff joined us on the two mile section to Sheep Lake. We all hung out at the lake briefly before Frank and I pushed on. The morning had quite a few climbs, but also had several spectacular views.

We took a short break for lunch and then hiked on through an absolutely massive burn area which seemed to go on forever - but one stretch had nice flowers.

We hiked quickly as we were scheduled to meet Frank's friend Mary at 6:00 at Government Meadows which was quite a ways away. We stopped at another spring and shortly after, the burn section finally ended. We reached the meadow a few minutes after 6 and Mary joined us for the final 5 miles of our day.

After a couple of miles, we came across trail magic. As we were looking to get to camp before it got too dark, we only hung around for 10 minutes. I had an apple and an oatmeal raisin cookie. We hiked on and reached camp right at 8:00 to find there weren't any good spots left. We managed to squeeze into a couple spots and then ate dinner. Mary had packed out sandwiches, cookies, plums, and a few other things for us. It was a great end to a very busy and long day.