21 Miles
Rock Creek Guard Station
Whelp, not to much sleep last night. Camping with Panama, Beth and the dogs last night proved helpful with regards to strength in numbers. Two times through the night, at midnight and around 2:30am we awoke to something stalking our camp. Nobody looked out to see what it was but it sounded big and bearish. It came close to Spins and my tents, as usual, and noise was made to scare it off. The dogs got in on the action and barked a bit as well and eventually we were able to catch a couple hours of sleep before waking up. The whole time all I could think about was how mediocre of a job I did at hanging my food and hoped the bear wouldn't get it.
That morning was a little rough and groggy getting up and my food was luckily still hanging. At the base of the tree I tied the bear rope off of the ground had been ripped up by something big. Lucky me. Got out of camp a little later than usual and took off to finish our hiking around the awesome North Wall. After heading over a gap in the mountains we came to a huge burn area, again. The hiking was pretty strenuous for the first half of the day mileage-wise and it took way longer than half of the day time-wise. Adding to that the exposure from the burn area and temperatures probably around a highly humid mid to high eighties made hiking absolutely exhausting. Staying hydrated and out of the sun was crucial...insert umbrella. That thing saved my ass once again and I'm so happy to have it.
After a really shortened lunch around three in a quickly shrinking spot of shade, we crossed a river and had to ford which felt wonderful after being fried by the sun all morning and early afternoon. The water felt great and cooled off my head a bit. At that break, which Panama and Beth were hiding at under a small plot of shade we all realized there was a shelter symbol at the 21 mile mark for the day. The race was on to pound out the rest of the day to get there. We knew it was a guard station and would probably be locked up but also knew it probably has good camping and a privy (outhouse). The rest of the day surprisingly was under trees in forest. It felt great to have a relief from the sun. With roughly five to seven miles left in the day, Spins who had been struggling all morning got a sudden burst of energy and took off hauling ass to the shelter. I had a hard time keeping up for a bit but it was good to see her feeling better than this morning. After little sleep, the hot ass sun, and a bunch of blowdowns she was drained by midday. I felt it to and so did the others, doing around twenty miles a day consecutively for the past five days has taken its toll a bit especially because its still so early in the trail and nobody really has their trail legs yet. The guard station is nice (and locked up of course) but there is good water and good camping so Panama, Beth, the dogs, Spins, and I are calling it a night tenting close together in order to hopefully deter unwanted animal attention (fingers crossed!!). The heat from hiking through burn areas the past few days has really taken its toll, sunburned, dehydrated, and a little dizzy from all this weather which is pretty crazy considering a week ago I was up in elevation on snow field with it snowing on me freezing my butt off. The extremes so far on the CDT are truly extraordinary and it tests your patience on an hourly if not shorterI interval. That being said, this country is beautiful and the divide is really breathtaking in places. Tomorrow is the Chinese Wall first thing in the morning and it should be really impressive in the morning sun.
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