Sunday, April 6, 2025
Miles: 34.7
Gain/Loss: 2142’/2339′
I was awake at 5:30am, and headed out by 6:10am. I heard coyotes before sunrise. I couldn’t find a great spot to pitch my tent last night, so I just made do with where I stopped but that meant my tent wasn’t taut. The ground was very sandy but also had a hard crust a few inches down, and it was hard to drive my stakes in deep enough to hold my tent up well. Likely because of that and the colder night time temperature (and me forgetting to place my sweaty, wet clothes outside in my vestibule), there was frost on the inside of my tent ceiling in the morning.
I met Southern Comfort at the first water cache of the day; he was an older white man working on his triple crown. He’s done the AT, the AZT, and most of the PCT. He stopped for a lunch break in the shade and we briefly chatted with a local volunteer refilling the water jugs before I pushed onward.
It was delightful to have service today. I chatted with my partner Toby for almost 2 hours, and then with my hiking buddy Eric for an hour, then Toby again for a few minutes before bedtime.
I encountered two nice cattle wells, with sealed tires for the water basin. The water was cold and mostly clear; after the AZT, they were luscious water sources. There was some dirt road walking and some cross country navigation. I stopped for maybe 10 minutes around 2pm at a water cache to dry out the tent in the hot sun on a smooth surface, and have a snack in the shade of the cache. The box was the best shade I saw all day, aside from a telephone pole and 1-2 evergreen bushes.
Close to sunset, I saw two antelopes! They’re so fast and it was really cool to see a new animal I’ve only seen in zoos before!
I stopped by a wash with a nice tree around sundown (7:35pm); other people had clearly slept here before and I find that reassuring. I was asleep by 9pm.
Transcending Mountains 