Day 86: Sprinkles of Ash

July 14, Day 86: 1280.2-1311.9

Miles Hiked: 31.7

Gratitude of the Day: I’m thankful for music. It’s so nice to passively listen to music while suffering on parts of the trail. It helps distract from the difficulty. 

I set my alarm for 4 am, but was still so tired so I didn’t get up until 5:30. By the time I was packed  and heading down the trail it was 6:15. The start of the day consisted of 6.5 miles of downhill with 4200 feet down into the town of Belden. As I started the downhill I could see the valley below and off to the west I could see a new fire burning. By the time I got into the small town of Belden, one of the hikers I’ve been hiking around had family there and was doing huge trail magic breakfast. So I stopped and ate pancakes, keish, fruit, had coffee and a breakfast beer. After about an hour I decided to start the very long uphill climb out of Belden. I crossed the cute bridge in town and started. In front of me was 13 miles and 5400 feet of elevation.  As I climbed the wind shifted and it started to get smokey and a light dusting of ash started to come down. 

I knew that there was hikers ahead of me, so if they were turned around I’d know, so up I went.  Luckily even though it was hot, the trail was mostly in the cover of the trees. There was tons of nice cold water sources to take my sun shirt off and hat and soak it, doing this kept me cool up the hill.  When I finally crested the top it was 4pm and I’d competed 20 miles so far for the day. 

What I thought of that hill

5 miles more down trail I knew that there was trail magic so I knew I needed to hike 5 more miles. When I arrived, there was spaghetti, watermelon, cold coke and beer. The scuttlebutt from hikers coming in was that several hours after I had hiked up the hill, rangers closed the trail because of the smoke and the fire.  So as I sat at the amazing trail magic, I decided to hike 6.5 more miles to get further down trail.  I hiked into the smoke and the setting sun, by the time I got to camp it was 8:30pm and I had my biggest mile day on trail. Tomorrow morning I’ll officially hit the halfway point.