Day 34

19 miles
Mistakenly, I didn’t bring enough water with me to camp last night, so I had to ration what I did have. I made it up the first 2 miles to a stream and downed a liter as soon as I had it filtered. The blowdowns and overgrowth continued throughout the day, unless we were above treeline. We worked our way up and over two passes today, both with incredible views. While traversing around to Fire Creek Pass, I saw a bear wandering around the meadow, probably 1000 feet below the trail. The hardest part of today was getting down to Milk Creek and then climbing right back up.
3100ft down, 2700 up in 10 trail miles, or 2 as the crow flies. Switchbacks almost the whole way. I enjoyed the challenge of the climb, and even the overgrowth and blowdowns, but it definitely slowed us down. I waited at the top for Marie and every hiker that passed mentioned the clouds and expected rainy weather. We’ll see what the night brings. We have a lot of tents packed into Dolly Vista Camp, but everyone seems cool about it. We have, by far, the largest tent and that’s usually true at every site we stay. Everyone is very accommodating of us though, so it’s been fine. 8 more days until the border!