Day 85

19 Miles

Three days in a row! We saw a small cub towards the end of the day. Never saw the mom though. It was hard to see it through all of the trees and boulders. Lots of trail magic this morning too. After the first 2 miles we arrived at a trailhead that had a surprising amount of cars for how remote it felt. One of the guys there, trail name: Bearicade, came up and asked if we were thru-hikers and then offered Cokes, which we took. About a mile or two later we passed some day-hikers who offered us their bag of grapes after we told them we were doing the PCT. Most of the hikers in this area are TRTers and these ladies were into what we were doing. So, we had fresh grapes at lunch. We leapfrogged Scooter today, who we’ve seen a few times the past couple days. She was unsure about the upcoming ridgewalk because of how bad the wind was blowing, but she was okay to go if she could go with us. There had been a long burst of wind, which likely hit her when she left the saddle. She was ahead of us at that point, and we were still crossing it. I had just assumed it was typical wind on a saddle since that happens regularly, but it must have been a long burst. Anyway, she turned back, chatted with us, and then we led the way. We all did just fine because the wind was much calmer as soon as we started walking. Figures.