Day 31
Start: Three Points
Finish: Mt. Gleason
Daily Mileage: 16.1
PCT Mile: 420.8
With the clouds in around us for half the night, my tent and sleeping bag were soaked with condensation as expected. As always, I packed it all up wet to dry out later. It is much quicker to dry everything out in the middle of the day with the sun high and the condensation on everything else burned off already.
Easy trail in the morning heading downhill, across a creek, then back uphill. The sun was out today, but it was much cooler than normal. It was also a bit windy so that when we were going to stop to take our first break, we decided it would be too cold so we continued on. We stopped in a more sheltered area, but then and later in the day it wasn’t clear if we should stop in the sun or shade because the temperature was in between.
We did take a long break in the middle of the day to bake our wet stuff in the sun and wind, and got everything dried out. Leaving the break, my stomach was having issues. Perhaps the salami I have been eating at lunch the past few days. That stuff keeps for a while unrefrigerated, but maybe I will stop eating it. I only have a little bit left anyways.
The most interesting part of the day was Air Force aircraft circling the mountains at low elevations. At times they were flying below us. They circled and circled for hours, and once we got on the other side of the mountain, we finally figured out what they were doing.
A pilot/scout plane was leading a tanker, and the tanker was swooping in and dumping water. We assumed they were practicing fighting wildfires. I wasn’t aware that the Air Force got involved in that, but maybe they help out when needed.
In any case, the planes got rather close at times, but their dumping range was a couple miles from the trail, so we were safe from being soaked. Wouldn’t that be something…
We only planned to do 16 miles today, so we had plenty of time, and took breaks often. We still got to camp at 4 but that was good enough.
It is supposed to be windy tonight. The National Weather Service issued a wind advisory for tonight and all day tomorrow for “Northwest winds 20 to 35 mph with gusts up to 55 mph expected.” I’m in an oak tree grove which should protect me some, but that is really high winds for a tent and Cookie Monster’s hammock if it actually happens. We will deal with whatever comes up.
