Saturday, June 29th.

Saturday, June 29th. Day 11.

Today's miles 20.5 Total CDT miles = 133.5

The one thing about the CDT is that you don't really know how far your walking. On the AT and the PCT it was well enough marked and it was one continuous trail. Out here I am constantly switching from one small local trail to another; from a jeep road to no trail at all. And there are so many routes that you can take and almost no signs indicating one path from another. You have to rely on your maps. Throughout one day you have to make a handful of decisions about which way you want to go. For example, today I took a jeep road for five miles instead of hiking seven miles uphill. I also took a path along a ridge to avoid overgrown, tick infested-bear habit-lowland trail. The decisions for the trail today were easy but some days it has been a bit more difficult. Especially when snow is involved in the decision.

The beginning part of the hike today was uphill. It may not have been uphill for the first 12 miles but I had low energy today and it sure as hell felt like it. At the 12 mile mark we came across a cabin that we had been told about the night before from the host of the small campground at Maria's Pass. He told us that it was state property and that we were allowed to camp out front of it if we desired. We didn't camp there but we did seek the comfort and shade of the porch for lunch. I decided to cook my dinner for lunch to prevent having to stop somewhere not as nice to cook. I'd figured I'd eat my cheese wrap for dinner before settling down for the night. Panama and Beth thought cooking was a good idea as well so we were all sprawled out on the front porch of this cabin in the middle of nowhere boiling our noodles as the pups slept under the porch in the shade.

After the cabin Monkey and I decided to hike another 8.3 or so miles to 'Lost Horse Camp'. The first 5 miles of that were more jeep roads. Within about 10 minutes of leaving the cabin is when I met Chuck; bear number three. It was a change because Chuck was scared of us! We we walking along as normal making occasional noise to make the bears aware of us and Chuck heard us and got really scared. He ran down the mountain away from us. We still had the bear mace out, of course, but Chuck didn't want any trouble.

We didn't make it to the lost horse camp tonight. Beth, panama, and pups were camped just under a mile or so from the horse camp. They had decided to set up camp before the horse camp because it started to hail. Baboon and I decided to walk just a bit farther than them to set up camp, as we all feel safer in numbers.

Another horrible mosquito day. Another hot one as well...except for when it hailed.