Day 66

We woke today around 6am and took our time breaking down. It was very cold considering we went to bed feeling too hot. I cooked a hot breakfast and headed out. The trail was very mild and mostly shaded so I moved quickly to stay warm. About an hour in I ran into Bobby John, who’d given us trail magic, and said a quick hello. The trail was very pretty and followed the Tuolomne river and it has lots of cascades and larger waterfalls.

Arugula and I stopped and had a long break and chatted and relaxed. We didn’t feel rushed and didn’t have a plan. We both have too much food and could easily get to Kennedy Meadows North by Friday and be fine but we think Thursday would be better. So our breaks were long. The next stretch had some climbing and I was feeling very very tired. We took another long break in a meadow and I took my energy gel. That helped me feel normal. We walked and chatted and before we knew it we’d done 5.5 which was very surprising because it went by very quickly. Good conversation helps. We took another very long break and chatted for a while. It started lightly raining and we decided to move on.

The steepest and last climb of the day was here. It wasn’t that hard but it was longer than I would’ve liked. We hiked on and up to a beautiful lake called Miller Lake. It had a sandy beach and was very peaceful. It started raining again so we put our rain gear on and waited it out. Once the rain passed I saw there were very dark clouds behind us. We started moving again. The thunder picked up and the trail changed direction to head directly toward the dark sky. Thunder became very very loud and then the sky opened up. This would be the first time I was on trail while it was raining. It came down hard and for the last half hour or so before camp. When we arrived it was just a drizzle. The meadow was gorgeous. It had a beautiful creek running through it. The thunder continued and we even saw lightning as we set up our tents. We are in a large canyon so when the loudest thunder roared it echoed for almost 10 seconds and you could hear it travel from end to end. That was pretty cool.

We made dinner and headed into our tents. It was a wonderful and relaxing day. I’m thankful to be out here.