21.3 Miles
Indian Point
It was a good morning, I had no condensation on my tent for the first time on a while. Packing up a dry tent is always a pleasure. My food bag is really slim with only a day and a half left before I reach Benchmark Ranch and a food package for the next stretch to Lincoln, MT. I ate mashed potatoes for breakfast and it did a wonderful job of filling my stomach up to the brim. I must not have my hiker hunger yet because I can usually eat two packages of potatoes at a time midway through the trail. The first part of the day was uphill to the Chinese Wall which is a fantastic geologic feature that is roughly 6 miles long.
The wall is basically about a thousand or so feet high of uplifted land that juts into the sky and the CDT follows right alongside the bottom of it. The hiking was exposed and the trees relatively scarce from all the rockslide along the wall and we took lunch halfway through the it. I loved the massiveness and huge portions of rock that were exposed along the wall as well as the monstrous boulders at the base that were once part of the wall and have now settled after falling off. It was rough hiking for the first half of the day and doing miles like this are really wearing me down a bit so early in the trail but soon enough I'll be conditioned and all will be alright. My feet are hurting but the blisters are popped, callused and on the mend.
The second half of the day was a wonderful change of pace, downhill into the valley and following a river. The shade, ample water, and gentle grade was sorely needed and the rest of the day went by quickly. We ended up at Indian Point Guard Station for the night with Panama and Beth and all of us are excited to get our food boxes tomorrow because we are all running a bit thin on food this stretch. Benchmark Ranch tomorrow to pick up more food, hopefully there might be some 4th of July shenanigans going on there....tonight I dream of hotdogs and beer.
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