Day 145 - One Week Remaining

(Originally written on Saturday, September 26)

Back-to-back 28-mile days...woohoo!

After two days of hiking north of Stevens Pass, I have about 44 miles to go to Stehekin, my last resupply stop on the trail.

This morning I woke up to a mist with bite. The bite came from the chilly breeze. Today was the first day on the trail that felt like fall all day long. The clouds eventually burned off, but it was chilly enough that I wore my gloves all day long. Perhaps it was because of the chill that I did my 28 miles before the sun went down, unlike yesterday. I move faster in the cold weather just to stay warm!

Speaking of staying warm, it is freezing outside tonight! Even now inside my sleeping bag I can feel it. It's a good thing I brought my sleeping bag liner with me for this part of the trip...I can feel the difference already! But as cold as it is, I'm already dreading tomorrow morning. Getting up is going to be harder than usual...ugh. On the plus side, I've got a pretty cool campsite that I need to take a photo of before I break camp. Basically, I'm wedged between two huge rocks and one of them is providing a "roof" of sorts over top of me. Probably wouldn't help much if it was really raining, but may help counter condensation issues which would be nice.

So after two big days, tomorrow is supposed to be my "easy" 20-mile day. The problem is that I'll likely be working just as hard and just have fewer miles to show for it. The day begins with a crossing of Milk Creek. It had a bridge that was wiped out by an avalanche and now you can either go to the new bridge a mile downstream or just hop across some rocks. Then I have a (gulp) 2.5-mile climb at an 8.8 gradient. I think this will be my steepest climb of that length for the entire trip! Finally, I've got a crossing of the Suiattle River that will be interesting because it doesn't have a bridge (it got wiped out, too).

Okay...I'm off to sleep. Hopefully I'll have good things to report tomorrow!