On another cold morning I wasn’t anxious to get out of the sleeping bag. I heard my companions moving around 6:45 and I made myself get up and ate breakfast in the sleeping bag before breaking camp. I was the last one out of camp, but the first 3.6 miles were descending, so it was easy hiking except for the patches of snow to negotiate. This, the longest day of the year, is also naked hiking day, and early on we were thinking we would be up for the task, but the combination of wind, cool temps, and snow to negotiate thwarted our plan to hike a la natural.
After a midmorning snack break we climbed to Mulkey Pass, then to the junction with Trail Pass, where we stopped for an hour to snack again and to spend the last few minutes with Luna, who had to leave the trail to go back to Los Angeles. It was sad to see him go, even though we were only together for a couple of days. He was a lot of fun to spend time with and had great trail spirit and obviously had a special bond with his 2003 friends, similar to the bond our AT class of 2001 shares.
From Trail Pass we climbed to Cottonwood Pass. On the way up we crossed the 11,000 foot mark, a great excuse to take a candy bar break! From there we hiked on to Chicken Spring Lake, still covered in places with ice and snow and surrounded by steep granite walls of mountain. It was stunningly beautiful and we spent two to three hours there, including taking time to cook an early dinner. After dinner we hiked another 2.5 miles, negotiating numerous patches of snow drifts as we worked our way to a creek with flat, sandy camping nearby. Since we were camping at 11,300 feet and it was getting cold as the sun disappeared behind surrounding high peaks, I set up the tarptent to escape the stiff breeze.
After some conversation with the gang, I retreated to the tarptent and journaled until my hands were too cold to write, then settled into the bag fully zipped and cinched. Today I saw my first marmot at Chicken Spring Lake. What a cuddly animal! The day did not pass without quite a bit of reflection and sadness, for today was my ex-wife’s 40th birthday and I thought a lot about the great times we had together as well as the epoch struggle to heal a broken soul. My new trail buddies did a marvelous job listening and cheering me up, especially Pepper Jack, who is a very kind, easy going soul.
Today’s weather: sunny, low 29, high 68. Today’s mileage: 15.1; cumulative mileage 752.7.
