11.8 miles
232.9 AZT mile marker
I slept the best since I’ve been on the trail last night, all through the night which was great and restorative. It stormed and was really windy during the night, and it was great to not be out in that. There was some hail a couple times in the morning, and the wind just kept howling.
I was meeting back up with Breaks to head out of town, but we were starting later in the day which would give the weather some time to clear out. We met for a late lunch at a beer and cocktail bar for some really good burgers before heading out around 2.
We had a little bit of road walking to get back to the trail but it went quickly and it gave us a chance to see the now much snowier San Francisco peaks.
We rejoined the AZT urban route and got back into the ever present ponderosa forest. It was the same as the other forests we’ve been travelling through, but when we came to the intersection with the full AZT again, we were in a rocky canyon with probably the best cliffs we had outside of the Grand Canyon. It was a cool place, and I was happy to get into something more scenic and be in a canyon again in this beautiful part of the country so famous for them.
We shortly climbed out of the canyon, unfortunately, and again wandered ponderosa forest, weaving back and forth. You would have thought we were going in circles from all of the flat switchbacks.
We decided to hike until nearly sunset to make up for the late start and to make a good water source reachable to camp at tomorrow night. Our packs were heavy today heading out of town with the food resupply and water for about a day. There isn’t much more than muddy cow ponds as water sources for a while, so I opted to just carry more good water out of town. I’m not against using that water since I have a settling agent to remove most of the sediment and a filter, but all of the hikers are finding that the filters need constant attention and backflushing to get rid of all the sediment that clogs the elements. It is a lot of work and not easy to do.
We got the last camp spot before heading onto a more open plateau, hoping that camping in the pines will provide some shelter and maybe help our tents not freeze with condensation. It is still a little windy and almost freezing before I’m even going to bed. It’s supposed to get to the low 20s tonight. We should be fine but you just have to be more conscious of not letting your water or water filter freeze up and crack on you.