Day 76

Today I woke at 5:30am. I moved quick and was out of camp in under an hour. We had one last pass to climb called Dicks Pass. It was very mild and an easy climb. I sat and waited at the top for Arugula for almost 20 minutes but she didn’t show so I moved on. I texted her from my GPS to hers and she responded saying she had gotten lost. The trail was mostly gentle climbs and flat today. I stopped 11 miles into the day and Arugula met me there. We chatted and then agreed to go another 9.5 before a break.

I saw a huge rattlesnake cross the trail in front of me. It let me know it was there with a few short rattles. I moved quickly and listened to the audio from “The Last Dance” while I hiked. I saw yet another rattlesnake. This time it was small and climbed quickly into a hole and rattled loudly. I stopped briefly at a lake to get water and kept moving another 3.5 to the water we planned to meet at. Books, a guy we met the other day came by. We chatted and I found out he was also a software engineer.

I moved on another 5 miles to camp. We had one last climb that was very gradual. I felt fine until the last mile where I started getting sharp pains in my arch again. It only happened once though. I got to camp and washed my legs and soaked my feet for 20 minutes. I rolled them out with my ball for another 30 minutes. I’m elevating them tonight as usual. I’m hoping all that will help.