July 15.
Today day was much easier than yesterday though it felt much more terrifying at points. The climb out of Mica was sketch but managed okay. Only fell on my ass once and slid down one muddy 20 foot drop. Type 2 fun.
Hiked with Tyler, Twig, and Skybird for a while through an easy down/uphill stretch. Had a long foresty section that was I was glad was mostly shaded. Climbed back into the snow and had go up a long snow covered ridge walked. Freaked out a bit on the way up, couldnt get my heart rate down but managed to breathe mindfully and get up.
Met up with everyone at the top of an unnamed pass we called Awesome! Pass. With an exclamation mark after Awesome.
We met our first official NOBO at the top of the pass. He was a shirtless rugged guy we could tell was a thru hiker because of his worn skin and short shorts. It’s July and the dude was already in Washington just a few days away from the finish.
Another SOBO we saw at Stehekin, Tony, ended up making it to our camp and joined us. He’d pulled a 26 mile day and was going SOBO after having not been able to continue NOBO after all the fire closures last year.
Had planned to go 3 more miles to Reflection pond but the pass was so nice and the idea of watching the sunset, the sunrise, and cowboy camping beneath the entire galaxy was too tempting. Will make up miles tomorrow.
Twig unfortunately kept going and Sky couldn’t catch up to her to let her now. Feel terrible that we ended up leaving her when we had planned to meet her at the pond but she seems to be okay by herself. Still, wish we’d been able to catch her.
The sunset was amazing though. We sat and watched the sun slowly set over the mountains. I decided to cowboy camp since the bugs weren’t too bad. I set up in a little hobbit hole but decided to move over to a drier spot. We saw a few marmots running around so Taylor (who was also cowboy camping) and I gave our food to Spats to sleep with which he thankfully agreed to.
Plants Outside 