Thursday, July 10-33 Mile Day

The last few days have reminded me of the desert because there were very few water sources. Here is a picture of a spring about a half mile off the trail. It was very cold and refreshing. It was one of the nicer places I got water. 

Today I hiked until almost 10pm and ended up covering 33+ miles...and they were not easy miles. At 4pm, after a long hot descent, I reached the middle fork of the Feather River and began a 4,600 ft climb out of the canyon. I stopped at a nice creek crossing 2 hours later and washed my feet and socks and filled up my water bottles.

I thought I would hike for maybe an hour and then stop for the day. The trail climbed along a steep ridge for miles and there was no place to camp. I just kept going and going hoping that I would find someplace flat enough to camp. Eventually I stopped to eat a snack and put on my headlamp. I have hiked early in the morning with my headlamp, and watched the sunrise, but this is the first time I have hiked into the darkness and had to choose a campsite in the dark. At first I planned on cowboy camping (no tent) because it was so late, but after a few minutes of looking at the clouds, I decided to setup my tent. It didn't take long to confirm that was a good decision because it started raining before midnight. I got up, put on the rain fly, ate a bag of M&Ms and went back to sleep.