Day 47: traipsing through the desert with beautiful soul #3 :)

Monday 6/4/12
Miles 623-637 (14 miles)
Elevation

Today was one of the funnest (yes I know that's not a word but oh well) days I've had hiking! And that is because I got to hike with two of my favorite people on trail: Weather Carrot and Not So Bad. The latter of which is quickly becoming one of my top 3 favorite people. So is Weather Carrot actually. But he is in a category all on his own. Because he is just *that* unique. I honestly dont think I could do him justice trying to describe him, I'll just say he's absolutely hilarious in his own way and one of the most interesting and unique people I've ever met, with a really cool outlook on life and many other things. Haha.

Not So Bad is just awesome in so many ways. He went to UC Irvine too, which is where I went to school. He is also an incredibly beautiful soul and we groove pretty well together. I'm really stoked that he's chosen to hang with me the last couple days because he's really tall and can out hike me anytime he chooses. He's the tall dude in the pic. And that's also him in the blue jacket in the sleeping bag.

The girl I'm in the picture with is Sinead. I have no idea if I spelled her name right. She is also hiking in a skirt. Team Breezy FTW! Oh my gosh, the location where I took that photo was *so windy*! Holy moly the wind was just cranking!!

Today's hiking was lots of dry desert, then we went back up to around 7,000' and back in trees again. Its nice to be in trees and shade. Not sure how long that's gonna last. Lol. Temperature-wise it was a cooler today than average, hence the reason I haven't been night hiking.

Around 8 miles from where we camped last night there was a water cache. I was a huge cache of 60+ gallons, but it was also empty, so I didn't end up taking too much water. We were trying to save some for the people behind us. The water cache is maintained by a lady named Mary. She is amazing and honestly, most of us would not be ok through this part of the desert if it wasn't for her cache. THANK YOU MARY!!! :)

So since we didn't get as much water as we would have liked, we stopped at another water source 7 miles past the cache. This one was the most interesting water source I had to drink from. It was a spring but not pipe fed, so imagine a muddy meadow in a narrow valley with a trickle of water flowing down. We had to dig a hole, wait for water to pool, then scoop it up, and filter it through our bandanas. We are both treating water with just bleach so we ended up boiling the water too, just incase. It's funny, later in the day we saw one guy who walked by, he looked at the water, and decided to go 7 miles more to the next water source. Lol. We felt like badasses! Hee Hee :)

Anyways, we took an afternoon break under a tree which was really nice, and neither of us wanted to move, hence the reason we only did 14 miles. We rationalized that it was only 15 miles to Walker Pass where we hitch into town, so we could easily do that tomorrow morning.

Gosh I really hope it doesn't rain! There are clouds blowing in and it's looking kinda grey. Ah well, at least my tent goes up pretty quickly :)