Day 109 (6 August) - Mile 1295.47 - 1315.51

Campsite at mile 1295.47 to Carter Meadows trail junction

It was chilly last night. I didn't put on my rain flap so I had to wear my puffy jacket, gloves, and hat. I slept  warm and comfortable and had a great night's sleep.

I was sound asleep when Share Bear announced, "Good morning."  I laid there for 10 more minutes then got ready. Share Bear and I were ready to go, but brad was having a slow morning so we waited for him. We were all finally ready to hike at 7:30 AM.

Ready to hike.

This morning we have 3 more miles of climbing to get up the climb we started yesterday. First, a picture of the meadow we slept by last night.

Beautiful meadow.

Just after 8:30 AM we made it to the top of the 13 mile climb. We climbed a total of 6,063 feet...crazy.

Self-portrait "Made it to the top!"

We needed water and I was much happier getting it from Frog Spring versus yesterday's Rattlesnake Spring.

Loving Frog Spring

Share Bear collecting water from Frog Spring.

The trail is beautiful up here:

Nice

Woohoo...another milestone today...1,300 miles!  These milestones are coming faster since we are hiking 20 miles per day.

Proof I'm standing at PCT mile 1,300.

My 1,300 mile pose.

Check out this cool log fence we saw today.  I have no idea what it is fencing in.

Cool wooden fence.

We stopped for lunch around 12:30 PM just short of the 10 mile point. We usually try to stop past 10 miles so we have less miles to hike in the afternoon than in the morning. But, there was a really nice place to stop, so we stopped. At 2:00 PM...another too long lunch break...we got back on the trail with 10.74 miles to go to our planned camp for the night.

The scenery after lunch did not disappoint:

Cool rock formation.

Incredible view.

Today's PCT sign of the day is great:

PCT sign of the day.

More great shots of Share Bear hiking today:

So beautiful.

More cool rock formations.

We were doing well today and hiking strong. We thought we had a chance of getting into camp early today. Then the water situation hit us hard. We had to walk 0.3 miles down to a spring and carry up 4 liters of water each since our camp tonight is dry and the next water is 12 miles away. By the time we walked down, collected water, filtered a couple of liters, and walked back up, one hour had passed. We only had 2.23 miles to our campsite, but it was now 6:50 PM.

We arrived at camp at 7:45 PM and quickly pitched our tents. Free Lunch showed up and decided to join us. Then, Alex from Long Beach, who was hiking southbound joined us. He is thru-hiking California...cool.

It is another chilly night, and again I didn't use the rain flap. Hopefully I will sleep as well as last night.

My home for the night.