A Solid Day of Up Up Up - Mile 689 - 6/19

Boy did I not want to get up this morning...I was tired really really tired like a freight train hit me in the face. I got to the first spring around a mile up the mountain and the water was so nice and fine. I also saw a trail heading up a steep ridge past the spring. Lightbulb moment! I checked my map and saw that if I followed the spring a half mile up I could cut off twoish miles of unnecessary walking around the mountain to get there. So I started heading up and Spins came with. It was steep...like really steep. After a slow climb we got to a clearing annnnnnddddd I didn't see any trail. Granted it was another .3 miles up some serious steepness I couldn't see trail and tried to scope it out. I considered the fact that I wanted to do twenty strenuous miles today  over two mountains and because I wasn't absolutely sure where the trail was we headed back down. So lightbulb moment fizzled out pretty quickly and I wasted a good 40 minutes. Oh well...

After scaling back down the mountain I trucked up the rest of the first mountain and saw some tracks in the dirt. I wasn't sure what they were but after a trusty google search i determined that they were fresh mountain lion tracks, probably from the night before. I hiked the ridge over and went up the rest of the uphill and then promptly laid down, ate, and took a nap. Went down the mountain, gathered water for the hike and the rest of the night and tomorrow and huffed it up the second big uphill for the day. Going up there was very obvious remnants of pit mining and rusted old cars from the time period that the mines were active. Around the top of the uphill the woods cleared out because of the mining and what looked like a burn quite a few years ago. The last few miles going down to the road to camp on was tough with all the water weight on my back and my feet started to be angry at me. Got to the road a little after sunset and set up camp. Right before I was asleep I hear some rustling and Spins asking if I was outside my tent moving around. I wasn't and whatever was playing on her groundcloth ran really quickly away and came back and made a ruckus again about a half hour later. We deemed it a weasel or jackrabbit or something harmless and I fell asleep. Twenty One miles down, with a small failed adventure detour in the morning. Tomorrow I hike into Kennedy Meadows, the official end of the desert and I'm really excited!