Day 23, 22.1 Miles!! 🤯

It was a SUPER bright full moon that was up from 8pm-6am last night. All four of those photos above were taken at 4:45am with my iPhone! Not too baaaad!! Cheese didn’t sleep well because it was so bright. I slept maybe 4-5 hours on and off. Since we were up early anyway we decided to get an early start and we left by 6:00.

We’re that little bear on the far left, camped right at 12,000 feet. We immediately climb back up to 13k. The 12,000 feet mark on the far right between those water sources is our goal and it’s 22 miles away! These high elevation sections are no joke! 

Ok, so everything I wrote above, I wrote at about 5:30 this morning. That literally felt like yesterday! Today was so long and epic and truly probably the wildest and most scenic day I’ve ever had in my hiking career. Sorry in advance for 1,000 pictures but man was this something special! 

The Super Moon finally going down

“Brother Of The Other” Rock

Oooh Cuba!

There’s one thing you won’t see in any of my pictures today…. TREES! We spent the entire day above 12,000 feet which means no trees, no shade in the afternoon, and complete exposure to rain and lightning at elevations where rain and lightning love to occur! Luckily, the morning held blue skies with not a cloud to be seen! But remember that fondly because that is NOT how the rest of the day went!

Bougie and Stoke caught up to us here

Stoke

Clouds starting to move in

A poop with a view

Darkening skies

Bougie and Stoke

Best National Forest sign! 

Cheeseburgler

Ok, so it’s really hard to explain this, but in between all of these pictures with nice blue and sunny skies were times of wild thunder claps and lightning strikes. Cheeseburgler is basically a good weather talisman, and we seemed to eek through all of the worst storms. At times, we would turn around and the area immediately behind us was totally covered in rain clouds. We did have 2-3 hailstorm spurts, and one suuuuper deafening overhead thunder clap which made us all need to change our theoretical undies! 

Bougie


Towers of Mordor

Stoke

Stoke trying to beam up

Lava Canyon

This is where the CT splits off from the CDT

😍 Amazing view 

We fiiiiiinally got to the very top of our 4,800ft elevation gain for the day and the view was so amazing! There was a very impressive set of switchbacks that headed back down to 12,000 feet where the four of us were hoping to camp for the night. 

Epic switchbacks

Cheese

We found our spot and it barely had space for four tents. Digs came up the trail from the opposite direction about 10 mins later. He had missed the camping area and went about .8 miles down the trail accidentally! Splat came about 30 minutes after that. She had hunkered down during the rainstorms for a couple hours. It was such a beautiful spot! 

Gotta squeeze em in!! 

I’m super proud of Cheesburgler. He said this has been the hardest and most elevation gain day that he’s ever done, even counting all of the Appalachian Trail! I’m super glad to be hiking these last few days with him. We’re thinking we’ll stick together until the end! Tomorrow we hit Silverton! 

-Thanks for reading!