Day 2 - blue skies smiling at me...

Hauser Creek to Mile 28.3

Perfect hiking day - and of note we passed mile 26.6 today...1/100th of the way done- a hundred more times of this and we are in Canada!

I started the morning around 6:30 with a beautiful sunrise, hot cup of joe (Trader Joe’s instant coffee with the sugar and cream already in it is actually pretty decent) and a warm bowl of country bacon instant grits, and... ice on my tent. I am not going to lie - the condensation in the open campsites at Hauser was a pain in the morning pack up routine - the people who camped under the trees faired much better. After de-icing and rolling up the wet tent, my fingers were totally numb - but I was ready to hike.

I said goodbye to some new friends in the campsite and headed out alone - it was a pretty decent grueling climb (uphills are my kryptonite and always have been) that I was very happy to get out of the way in the morning. There seem to be very few people out on trail - I passed Andrea at some point and made plans to meet at the malt shop at the lake above.... hiked alone for most of the five miles up... jamming to ain’t no mountain high enough on repeat. Towards the top, I met Nichols and enjoyed a quick chat as he headed up and I sat for a minute to take in the amazing views of the lakes.

Made it to the malt shop and begged for a burger even though they were still serving breakfast - they delivered and it was amazing! We all hung out for about two hours growing in numbers and sharing stories. I really love hearing people’s backgrounds - so this was a big treat for me.

Andrea and I headed back out around noon and hiked some fairly easy mileage together, stopping to get water at Boulder Oaks Campground and make a plan with others on a camp spot for the night - (confession: I have always found pit toilets a bit ewww... so very funny that after a single day I was like ohhh pit toilet... luxury!) - I highly recommend Boulder Oaks for a campsite to anyone hiking and reading this - super clean, fire pits and of course pit toilets!!

We still had some good daylight left and decided to hike a few miles down trail to camp on the ridge! Amazing sunset view!

The day was beautiful - 50s - sunny-blue skies and we were all eager to hike up Laguna in the morning...

Unable to sleep - I checked the weather for the next day - starting at 10am was blizzard conditions - snow, sleet, 70mph hour wind gust - I grew worried and reached out to some people for a pickup at a road 1.6 miles away early in the morning - not sure if the others would want to hike - I wanted to make sure we had an option - Cowboy delivered saying he could meet us at 7:30....

I was awake most of the night trying to fight my pride, which wanted to push forward and my brain which said that would be miserable...

Overall - it was a great day! Dinner was a backpacker’s pantry rice, bean, chicken dehydrated meal with cheese block on tortilla... boom burrito!

Our party of four (Scout, Warp Drive, Andrea and myself) has grown to six - Dan - trail name rooster because he has woken the campsite up at 4:30 in the morning with song or yelling Good Morning Vietnam - extremely funny, lighthearted 67 year old and Masha, trail name Pacemaker (extremely fast and driven, 20 something, Ukrainian hiker and mountaineer).