Day 22: Good morning, Washington!

August 6: I woke up before sunrise to hit the trail early--just before 6:00am! I wanted an early morning start since it was supposed to be another scorcher of a day and this particular day required a pretty long uphill climb that I wanted to get done as early in the morning as possible.


The trail rambled through a majestic forest of enormous cedar trees. It would have been a pleasant place to camp except for the mosquitoes in the region. They didn't bother me too much as long as I kept moving, though.

Massive cedar trees!

The trail veered left onto Trail 311--these trails I was on now were so remote and unused, they appeared to have no real names. Just numbers! I had been making pretty good progress until Trail 311. It was a steep uphill to the Idaho-Washington border, but it was also badly maintained with blowdowns and muddy bogs to slow me down, and sunny areas were severely overgrown and scratched at my legs as I passed by.

As I approached the Idaho-Washington border, I pulled out my GPS to mark the exact location having absolutely zero faith that there would be a sign to mark the border. It's really a shame that the PNT doesn't have official signs to mark the state border crossings. Yeah, it's not really important for hiking purposes, but it's a photo op! It's free publicity by every thru-hiker who passes the sign and takes a selfie with it. And it's fun for the thru-hikers. Another state down! Two states down and only one left to go! Of course, this last state makes up about 75% of the trail. I wasn't even near the halfway point yet.

I marked a line in the trail where my GPS showed the location of the border to be and took a photo of my foot crossing over it, but a couple of hundred feet later I found a much better display that a hiker ahead had created made out of rocks and sticks and decided to make that the "official" border even though my GPS showed it being off a little bit. I would have stopped to make a better one myself, but the bugs were horrible so I didn't want to linger. I took a quick photo and moved on!

My GPS showed this marker for the Idaho-Washington border as being in the wrong place (just a little bit!), but it was much better than my line in the dirt! I'd have done something better except the bugs were terrible!

Near the end of my hike on Trail 311, the trail suddenly became wide, clear and absolutely beautiful! There had been a trail crew out here, and it wasn't very long ago. My struggle through the overgrown vegetation, over blowdowns and through muddy, soggy trails had come to an end and my pace picked up dramatically. It was an awesome trail! I only wished they had time to fix all of Trail 311. I only got to enjoy maybe 10 minutes of the cleared trail!

Trail 311 intersected with Trail 512--the Shedroof Divide Trail--and I missed the junction--but I didn't realize it at first. I did find *a* junction with 512, but it seemed to be going in the wrong direction. I theorized that the trail overlapped with Trail 311 a short way before it veered off at another junction and assumed it was further ahead on the trail.

But then the trail started going downhill and, according to my maps, I should have veered off before then. After about 5 minutes where I felt like I was going in the wrong direction, I finally decided to backtrack. I passed the intersection I had seen, then walked a sort way where I found the junction that I had missed. I could totally see how I had missed it. It was a little overgrown at the area and the junction formed at a sharp angle that hid the trail until you were just about to walk past it--and if you weren't looking to the left, you'd miss it. And that's exactly what I did.

Argh! I probably wasted 15 minutes walking in the wrong direction. I had places to go! Things to do! I couldn't waste time walking in the wrong direction!

Trail 311 was muddy, boggy and overgrown. Not easy to walk through! At least not until the very end before the PNT veered off onto Trail 512.

Trail 512 climbed a steep slope before entering a burn area that exposed the trail to the burning sun. Temperatures were miserably hot and the views--although expansive and beautiful--looked very hazy. Especially hazy towards the east. At the top of the slope, though, the trail largely leveled out and followed a ridge. The trail was in pretty good condition--not perfect, but good--and my progress went well.

I bumped into a couple of day hikers who were taking a break and I joined them for a quick chat. They were an older couple named Kathy and... I forget the name of the guy.  They seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see them. They had deliberately got a very early morning start to beat the heat of the day and now planned to turn back and go back to their car.

They eventually got up to leave and I did the same, but I walked at a faster pace than them and pushed ahead. Kathy said something about my hiking so fast but I told her that they'd probably catch up when I took a break--which is exactly what happened an hour later. I was getting hungry and tired and needed a break so I took rest at a nice overlook and they passed me by about 15 minutes later.

Eventually I got up and pushed onward, enjoying the great views of the ridge even if it was uncomfortably hot.

The views from the ridge were great! Although a little hazy....

The trail eventually landed on forest service road #22 which was the trailhead where the older couple had started from. They were at their vehicle getting cold drinks out of their ice chest when I arrived and they offered me a beer. Ugh. I thanked them for the offer but told them I didn't actually like beer. I'd be happy with a soda if they had one, though!

No, they didn't have a soda, but they did have cold water. I had plenty of water in my pack but it definitely wasn't cold water anymore and I was happy to take it off their hands. Kathy popped open the beer to drink

I needed a rest and laid out my groundsheet in the shade on the side of the road and chatted with the couple some more. About five minutes later, I saw a guy hiking up the dirt road. Was that... a thru-hiker? The guy was distant when I first saw him but as he got closer, I could tell it was Ryan--the thru-hiker I met in Bonners Ferry several days earlier.

"Green Tortuga!" he shouted to me.

"Ryan!" I shouted to him.

I was a little confused about his approach, though, because he wasn't even on the trail. He wasn't even on an official alternate of the trail. Where the heck was he coming from? Did he get lost or something?

A thru-hiker in his natural habitat! The first one I've seen ON the trail! Well... kind of... =)

He explained that he had some maps of the forest service roads and realized he could take a shortcut by following the road to the trail. He wanted to reach the trail town of Metaline Falls tonight and needed all the help he could get. I didn't intend to reach Metaline Falls until tomorrow. He had camped at one of those beautiful campsites at Priest Lake. Priest Lake to Metaline Falls in one day? That was insane! No, I definitely had no intention of doing that!

I also asked him if he happened to find a bunch of cheese in the mini-fridge at the hotel in Bonners Ferry before he left. I had left three packages of cheeses there in my haste to leave and had been kicking myself for it every since. No cheese! The horror!

He said that yes, he had found it, and it's been delicious! He thanked me for the food but admitted that he still had one of the individually-wrapped units of Tillamook cheddar cheese in his pack. He pulled it out and threw it to me. Cool! I got less than one ounce of my precious cheese back! =) Good thing I didn't run into him an hour later--the cheese would have gone completely!

Cold water, hot cheese.... life was good! And a thru-hiker on the trail! Well, actually, technically, not ON the trail. He was hiking up a road that was definitely not part of the trail, but he'd leave continuing to follow the gravel road which, at that point, was on the trail.

The older couple drove off and Ryan and I caught up on our adventures since leaving Bonners Ferry--especially the area just out of Bonners Ferry with the blowdowns and the bushwhack.

"Did you feel like going through those blowdowns was really dangerous?" he asked me.

"YES!" I replied. He told me at one point that he fell and a branch impaled his pack leaving a hole an inch wide and several inches deep. "If I hadn't been wearing my pack, that would have impaled me!"

Yeah. It was definitely a brutal section of trail. I already knew it, but it felt good to have confirmation from someone else. It wasn't just me that thought those sections were difficult and dangerous. At least I had my SPOT device to give me a little comfort. Ryan didn't have one. If he had hurt himself, it could  have been really bad.

Ryan continued onward, eager to reach Metaline Falls tonight, but I lingered at my shady spot on the road for an hour before pushing on. It was miserably hot out and it was now at the hottest part of the day. It was a good time for a long break.

But I couldn't stop for the day. I was in a 17-mile dry stretch with no water and I definitely needed to reach water today. I didn't have enough to last me overnight! And I still had quite a few miles before I would reach Noisy Creek--the next reliable water source I expected on the trail.

After I packed up and continued hiking, the trail followed the dirt road for several minutes before veering off into the woods again. I wondered if Ryan continued following the road toward Metaline Falls. I was pretty sure the trail crossed the same road again a dozen miles up ahead a few miles outside of town. It would probably be shorter and faster than the official trail.

I was going to stick with the official trail and veered off back into the woods.

The trail went through another burn area that gave me a few difficulties--mostly just trying to follow the actual trail which was hard to identify at times. At least the blowdowns weren't a big problem!

The last few miles, the trail descended thousands of feet toward Noisy Creek and I stopped for the evening at the first campsite I found along the creek.

The creek was called Noisy Creek and it was noisy, but it didn't seem any noisier than any other creek and I wondered why it got its name.

I arrived at camp absolutely exhausted. I had covered 22.1 miles according to my GPS, but the number that surprised me was the 9,900 feet of elevation gain that my GPS had recorded. I basically climbed what amounted to a 10,000-foot mountain! On a brutal, 100-degree day.

But I made it and had a nice creek to listen to as I drifted off to sleep.

I just love these giant cedar trees!

I'm not really sure what this was doing in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if it's old mining equipment from back in the days when they mined in this area?

Some blowdowns on Trail 311

I think this sign might have been forgotten when a trail crew left because there was definitely no trail crew in the area when I hiked through! But the sign was cute! =)

A very short road walk today!

Day 21: Priest Lakes

August 5: The day started with a short climb up Lookout Mountain before veering back down the mountain just before the summit. I was tempted to make the half-mile trek to the top where another fire lookout tower was located but decided not to. I wanted to get miles in this afternoon and the weather forecast called for Bonners Ferry to hit over 100 degrees. I was no longer located in Bonners Ferry, of course, and at these elevations, it was doubtful that I'd personally feel such warm temperatures, but it was going to be a miserably hot day--no doubt about that! At the lower elevations the trail passed through, I expected at least 90 degrees. I wanted to put my efforts today into distance rather than explorations.

Sunrise over Lookout Mountain--there's another fire tower at the top but the trail didn't lead to the top and I didn't take the 1/2-mile side trip to check it out. Sorry!

So I skipped the summit and followed the trail thousands and thousands of feet downhill toward Priest Lake. Temperatures soared as the trail descended.

The trail eventually led to a gravel road which my maps showed it following for about three miles, but I noticed orange flagging that seemed to mark a route on a faint trail which also cut between some switchbacks. I was all in favor of getting off the road--especially if I could shorten the distance I had to cover by following this flagged route.

The route cut off a switchback and led back to the same road I was on before. Fast, easy, efficient. I liked it! Not very long, though.

I followed these orange flags cross-country thinking maybe it was a PNT reroute in progress... Maybe it was, but they definitely wound up leading me in the wrong direction!

Which is when I noticed another orange flag leading off the road. There wasn't a clearly defined trail like the first one, but there was a faint-looking game trail and if I could cut another switchback and get off the road, sure--why not?!

I followed the flags off-trail (and off-road) again. The flags led downhill a short way and eventually made a sharp turn to the left. The sharp left turn had me a bit worried. That didn't seem like the right direction. In the distance, I could see where I needed to go and the route seemed to be going around a steep hillside. Maybe it would zig and zag and still get me to the right location?

Views of Priest Lake far below were wonderful! From Lookout Mountain, the trail headed thousands of feet downhill to its shores then followed the shoreline several miles northward along the Idaho Centennial Trail.

I followed it. The faint game trail eventually led to a fairly well-defined trail which gave me a bit of confidence, but it still seemed to be leading me in the wrong direction. The trail was in bad shape, though, with lots of blowdowns and little evidence of recent work.

At this point, I felt pretty confident that I had made a grave mistake. I should have stuck with the official trail and followed the gravel road, but I felt like I had gone too far to turn back now. Turning back would set me back by an hour or more. Nope, I pushed onward and doubled down on my bet.

Although the blowdowns were terrible at times, the thick trees provided a lot of shade from the burning sun.

The blowdowns along the last part of the flagged route were pretty bad....

And finally, the trail burst out onto a gravel road! I had made it! Well, almost.... According to my maps, I was still about a half-mile off trail having arrived at a paid campground on Priest Lake. A small day-use area with restrooms and trash cans were available so I walked across the road to the trash can to throw out my trash. May as well take advantage of the place while I was there! There were quite a number of people around but the beach seemed unusually empty of people.

The beach at the day use area next to the campsite on Priest Lake seemed surprisingly empty of people! (There were definitely people around... just not on the beach here!)

As I threw out my trash, I noticed a vehicle drive by which looked suspiciously like Gypsy's. I only got a quick glance as the car drove by--I certainly didn't expect to see anyone I knew out here and hadn't been looking for him--but the driver even looked a little like Gypsy. He drove past and was out of sight in seconds. Was that Gypsy? What was he doing out here? It wasn't even the trail here! It would have been nice to run into him again. I'd tell him he was smart for skipping those horrible blowdowns and bushwhack. The trail had been brutal since leaving Bonners Ferry!

I followed a side road through the campground preferring to stay off the main gravel road when I saw the same truck drive by again. Gypsy?! Again?! I rushed through the grassy area dividing the campground road from the main gravel road and waved to the truck that had already passed by. Maybe Gypsy would see me in his rearview mirror? Assuming, of course, it was Gypsy. I still hadn't gotten a good look at the driver--again, I wasn't expecting or looking for him! Maybe I should just stay on the main gravel road.... just in case he drove by a third time.

This gravel road seemed like a weird place to find a refrigerator.... In the off chance that maybe there was trail magic inside, I opened it to look--but it was empty!

I followed the gravel road for about a half-mile before it rejoined the official PNT which veered off the gravel road from the opposite direction at an intersection with the Idaho Centennial Trail.

The PNT followed the Idaho Centennial Trail for several miles.

The Idaho Centennial Trail was a mostly nice section of trail--fairly flat, level and shaded. But so freakishly hot late in the afternoon! There were a few annoying blowdowns blocking the path. Why?! Why can't these people maintain a trail--even so close to a well-traveled gravel road? Argh!

More blowdowns blocked part of the Idaho Centennial Trail... but nothing as bad as it was a few days ago!

The trail crossed a small creek which required fording. I decided to take my shoes off this time, but I'm not sure why. I didn't feel like getting my shoes and socks wet, so I didn't. On the other side, I found a set of hiking shoes that were completely soaked. That seemed odd. Someone crossed the creek with their shoes on... then took them off to continue hiking further? I wasn't sure what to make of the abandoned shoes, and I knew they hadn't been there long since they were still dripping wet.

A ford! A ford! We must cross the water here!

The trail followed alongside Priest Lake with wonderful views often overlooking the lake and I stopped for a long lunch break at one of them. I wound up taking a 2.5-hour rest hoping to beat the hottest part of the day watching Netflix shows on my phone and reading my Kindle while admiring the views across the lake. I also set out my solar panel in the sun and put the sun to work!

It was a lovely place to camp but late in the afternoon, I packed up my stuff and continued onward. I had more miles to get done!

Priest Lake

The trail finally passed Priest Lake and headed into a thick cedar forest with cedar trees that looked like they could be a thousand years old. Some of the trees were absolutely massive, maybe 8-feet in diameter. It was a gorgeous area to walk through.

Then I heard a loud sound from a tree on my left. It was a bear! Climbing a tree! Holy cow! The bear climbed up the tree seconds--I had no idea they could climb a tree so quickly and efficiently! A monkey couldn't have climbed the tree faster.

It looked like a small bear, though. Not a baby, perhaps, but not adult-sized either. Maybe an adolescent? And my first thought was, Where the hell is mama bear?

It's a bear! In a tree! (Sorry the photo is so horrible. It was the best I could under such low-light conditions from a relatively far distance without my fancy camera.)

I looked around urgently but didn't see any evidence of mama bear. It didn't mean that she wasn't around, though, and I felt really uncomfortable not knowing where mama bear was. I pulled out my bear spray and back up away from the tree the bear had just climbed.

I really wanted to look at the bear in the tree and get some pictures, but I kept scanning the forest around me. My priority was mama bear! The bear in the tree was no threat me, but a nearby mama bear certainly could be!

I didn't want to continue ahead on the trail--if mama bear was ahead of me, that would be the wrong direction to go. So I stood at a distance, not sure what to do. Go forward? Go back? Go into the woods and swing far around from the tree the bear just climbed?

It was hard to know the best course of action without knowing where mama bear was! I decided to stay still for the time being--wait and see if mama bear showed. While waiting, I took out my point-and-shoot camera and snapped a couple of blurry, out-of-focus photos of the bear in the tree. What I really needed was my fancy camera with the 300mm zoom lens but I had mailed that home a couple of weeks earlier. But even if I did have it, I would not have felt at all safe to drop my pack and pull it out for photos. I needed to keep my pack on--just in case mama bear showed and I needed to make a quick exit!

The cedar trees in this section were gorgeous!

I stayed put for maybe half a minute when the bear in the tree started moving. He appeared to be coming back down to the ground. I didn't like this development at all. No! No! Stay in the tree! He couldn't attack me from the tree so I liked him being in the tree!

I decided to make a run for it down the trail. I wanted to make it past the bear before it was back on the ground. I'd rather have the bear behind me on the trail than ahead of me and not having a good way around it. So I put my camera away and dashed ahead with my bear spray ready--hoping mama bear wasn't ahead somewhere.

It wasn't until about 5 minutes later when I felt like I had gotten far enough away from the bear that I felt safe from any possible attacks from the mama bear--assuming there was still even a mama bear in the picture. The bear in the tree had been absolutely adorable, though! Such a cute little face!

It was getting late in the day now and the thick cedar trees provided plenty of shade, but photos were becoming hard to take in the low-light conditions until the trail came out of the woods. Now the trail followed several miles on a gravel road.

At one road intersection, the primary route turned right while an alternative route turned left. So far, I always stayed on the primary route and avoided the alternates but this time, the official PNT maps said, "The northern primary route is not recommended at this time." If the PNT folks officially recommends taking the alternate route, then that's the way I'd go!

I veered left.

The road walk was easy and uneventful. Mostly flat. Mostly....

As the afternoon wore on, the daylight continued to diminish. I kept pushing onward, though. There was a 17-mile dry stretch coming up--no water for 17 miles!--and tomorrow was supposed to be another 100 degree day. I wanted to get as close as possible to this 17 mile stretch so I could make it completely through the next day--so even though it was starting to get dark, I kept pushing onward. Every mile I did this evening was another mile I didn't have to get through tomorrow.

Ultimately, I had to stop. It was just getting too dark for me to take photos, but I did reach the end of the road walk and camped at the trailhead. It wasn't as far as I wanted to get, but I did finish 22.8 miles making it one of my longer days on the trail. It was definitely the latest time that I stopped for the day! The campsite wasn't at all scenic or nice. It wasn't even near water, but I would pass another water source--the last known water source--a few miles further up the trail and had stocked up with water at the previous source a couple of miles back so I was good to go for a waterless campsite.

All-in-all, a pretty good day--despite the heat! And I saw another bear! But the campsite at the end of the day was uninspired. I'd have much preferred one of those sites on Priest Lake!

I camped at this trailhead for the night.

Still lots of 'boulder turkeys' (i.e. grouse) on the trail!

I just love the bark on these trees!

Priest Lake

There are some wonderful campsites on Priest Lake and I so wanted to stay at one of them.... but I also wanted to put myself in a better position to get through a 17-mile dry stretch of trail tomorrow so I pushed onward.

Day 20: The Bushwhack!

August 4: I didn't sleep well during the night. The problem with camping at popular backcountry campsites are critters. They've learned to associate food with people and generally have lost their fear of people. It makes for very aggressive critters trying to get into your gear.

View from my campsite at Lower Ball Lake shortly after sunrise

And that's what happened all night long. A mouse kept trying to get into my gear. I tried to throw rocks at it but the thing moved like a bullet. He was fearless and indestructible! So I didn't sleep especially well.

But the sunrise finally arrived and I packed up camp and headed out to begin the infamous 5-mile bushwhack. There was no officially created trail for the next 5 miles--just a vaguely plotted line on a map. Mentally, I broke this bushwhack down into three distinct segments.

The first segment was to climb the ridge behind Lower Ball Lake then follow along the top of it.

The climb up was hairy at times. There were a number of steep, rocky cliffs and an inopportune fall could have meant death! My progress went slowly as I navigated the rocky obstacle course looking for the safest, easiest route available. As a general rule, I aimed uphill and a little to the left where the ridge came down from a mountaintop, but my actual route had me going up and down and all around. Occasionally I had to backtrack when I ended up next to a steep cliff and felt I should find a different route for safety's sake.

The first segment of the bushwhack involved going uphill to the ridge-top, then following the ridge to the left. Rather than shoot for the top of the mountain, though, I angled my route a little to the left so I'd get to the ridge near the left side of this photo.

There wasn't much evidence of anyone being up here either. No clearly defined trails, and some areas seemed completely untouched by man. At this high elevation, the trees were thin and the views absolutely stunning!

Where there was no right or wrong way to scramble to the ridge-top, everyone took wildly different directions and routes and no trail formed. Once I reached the ridge-top, there was an obvious best route to follow: stay on the ridge top! It was generally flat, required less up and down hiking, and the ridge itself acted as a directional marker. It was also clear that everyone who reached this point felt the same because all of the various routes up merged into a single trail along the ridge. It wasn't an official trail by any stretch of the imagination--just the pounding of feet following the most obvious option. My pace picked up quickly through this area.

The second segment of the bushwhack involved descending thousands of feet to the valley bottom on the right side of the ridge. I had climbed up from the east-facing slope and would have to descent the west-facing slope. A cairn marked the turn off the ridge. The only rule for this section was to always head downhill. As long as I was going downhill, I was going in the correct direction. This segment would end when I reached the bottom of the valley--probably at a creek.

The second section of bushwhack was more-or-less straight downhill to the valley bottom. There was a lot of waist-deep vegetation to push through, though!

I was surprised to see a very clearly defined trail leading downhill and followed it. This was easy! I hoped the whole bushwhack followed such a well-defined trail the entire distance!

It only lasted about 5 or 10 minutes, however, before the well-defined trail split, split again, and again. With each split, the trails became fainter, more overgrown, and harder to follow. After 15 minutes, I was standing in an area that looked completely untouched by man without even a hint of a trail. This is where the real bushwhacking began. This is where the bushes in bushwhacking were located. Vegetation scraped at my arms and legs and ripped new holes in my pants. An occasional blow down would block my path and require my scrambling over or around it, but those weren't too bad. It was the thick, waist-high vegetation that became the bane of my existence.

You can't move very quickly through this stuff!

I wondered if I was the first person to ever push my way through some of these bushes, and I was comforted by the SPOT device on my pack. If I hurt myself out here or (heaven forbid) died, nobody would ever find my body without it! Even if people knew I was out here, it would be impossible to search thoroughly. For all I knew, there could be long dead bodies on the trail in this section and I could pass a few feet away from them and not even know it. The SPOT device was transmitting my position every 5 minutes. If I died unexpectedly, it would help search and rescue narrow down my location to within a few dozen feet. It's the only way they'd be able to find me (or my body!)

Bushwhacks like this are really best done with a hiking partner, but the SPOT was a close runner-up!

Occasionally, I'd find a small game trail which I could follow for maybe 10 or 15 seconds before it petered out and I was waist deep in vegetation again. For those brief few seconds, though, I felt like I was flying! I wondered about the hikers who came before me who plowed through the area, and I wondered why the game trails would peter out to nothing. What happened to the hikers?!

It took me over an hour to navigate down to the bottom of the valley where I reached a small creek. This was the third stage of the bushwhack: Following the creek out to a proper trail and "civilization." The route was easy to follow but difficult to traverse. Just follow the direction of the creek and stay at the valley bottom. If I started going uphill, I was going in the wrong direction. If I started going away from the creek (or upstream), I was going in the wrong direction. I just needed to follow the mostly flat creek downstream back to civilization. Easy peasy!

This creek marked the beginning of the third section of the bushwhack--follow it downstream until it reached civilization!

Except, of course, it wasn't easy. I veered back and forth near the creek, continuing to put the whack in bushwhacking. Sometimes the lay of the land pushed me a little out from the creek, but then I started heading uphill or reached an unexpected cliff and I had to backtrack back toward the creek. My map showed the route on the west side of the creek, but I followed a small game trail to the east side. But that petered out after a few minutes and I had to bushwhack back to the west side.

Progress was frustratingly slow and difficult, veering back and forth looking for the best route through.

Six and a half hours after I started, I finally reached what looked like an old parking lot with a campsite and the official end of the bushwhack. I made it! I was alive! I hollered into the air with glee. I made it! I was done! The bushwhack was behind me!

This clearing (and campsite) marked the official end of the bushwhack. I made it! I survived! Yeah!

The official maps of the PNT showed the bushwhack as being 5 miles long but my GPS had recorded my route as closer to 6 miles with all my zig-zagging and backtracking, which meant I averaged just under one mile per hour. It was a full day of hiking! And I officially covered 5 measly miles. Ugh.

I was exhausted when I reached the end of the bushwhack and needed a break. I laid out my groundsheet in some shade by the campsite and laid down taking a two-hour rest break and examining my new injuries. So many small cuts and scrapes on my legs! I wore pants, but they had so many holes in them now. These pants would definitely need to be replaced--probably sooner rather than later.

I was tempted to stop right there. It was a lovely campsite with the creek nearby, but I really wanted to get more than 5 miles in for the day and there were still hours of daylight available.

I had trouble finding the trail out of the clearing. According to my maps, there was supposed to be a real trail here, but I couldn't find it. Argh! I did find some orange flagging that appeared to mark a faint trail so I started following those, but it seemed more like a bushwhack than a proper trail. At least it wasn't overgrown with vegetation and I could move fairly quickly over the terrain. But the next mile... was more bushwhack than trail.

At least I thought it was the end of the bushwhack.... seemed I still had to do a bit more!

After a mile of following the flagging, though, I finally reached a real trail! The next couple of miles were filled with dozens of day hikers and groups swimming in the creek I had been following. Polluting my water source, I was thinking, but there should be other water sources I could drink from so that wasn't a big deal. But so many people! I bet I was the only one who hiked over from Ball Lakes, though!

Now that's a real trail!

One of the day hikers I stopped to chat with for a few minutes and he asked where I had hiked in from. I told him that I started the day at Lower Ball Lake.

He looked at me, a little confused. "But there's no trail between there and here."

Yeah, tell me about it! *rolling eyes*

The trail reached a gravel road--the trailhead for all those dayhikers--and I followed the road a short way to another old road. It used to be a gravel road but dirt and rocks were piled at the beginning of it to block vehicular traffic and only allow pedestrians through.

This pile of dirt and rocks prevented vehicles from accessing this old forest service road. It was a hiking trail now.

The trail switchbacked up the mountain, passing a couple of nice waterfalls and providing some nice views of the valley below. I could see all the way from the ridge-top I followed in the morning to the valley bottom I spent most of the day following. I hadn't gone far, but wow--it was far!

I followed the former road-turned-trail a few miles and up a couple of thousand feet before setting up camp at a flat area on the trail shortly after filling up with water at one of the waterfalls. For the second day in three days, I camped directly on the trail when I couldn't find a place off the trail to camp, but this time it didn't seem like a big deal because it was on the old forest service road. If, in the unlikely event a hiker came by, they would have no trouble getting around me. I wasn't blocking the trail despite camping directly on it!

View from my campsite on the trail

After a half hour after setting up camp, giant ants seemed to invade my campsite. Where did they all come from? I spent much of the evening flicking them off my groundsheet. I cleared  an area around the edges of my groundsheet so they had to run across "open ground" where I could see them easier and flick them off as needed. I wondered if moving my campsite 30 feet up the trail would help, but I was tired and comfortable and didn't feel like moving camp. I could keep flicking ants. They were bound to need some sleep eventually, right?

I also found the first tick on my pants. Where did that come from?! Well, obviously, it came from the bushwhacking. It was kind of remarkable that I hadn't found more ticks before today. I didn't flick it off like the ants--I crushed it. The tick deserved to die, I thought. I also didn't want it trying to crawl back into my campsite like I suspected many of the ants were doing!

It was a long, brutal day of hiking--and my GPS recorded covering a mere 12.0 miles. The official trail miles that I completed, according to my maps, was about 10.5 miles. It was a brutal, brutal day and I was glad it was over!

This was taken shortly after I started the day's hike, looking back down at Lower Ball Lake which I camped next to the night before. See my campsite on the far shoreline? =)

Some of the hike up to the ridge-top was a bit harrowing, like this dead end that dropped 30 feet down!

The top of the ridge was the easiest and fastest section of the bushwhack--and there's even a hint of a trail along it!

Views were awesome near the ridge top!

There were tons of hikers near the trailhead!

Looking back on the trail, I could see the ridge top where I was in the morning! I didn't make it far as the crow flies, but OMG--so hard to hike it!

So many scrapes and bruises from the bushwhack (as well as the blowdowns from the previous two days). Only the biggest cuts and scrapes show up in the photo. All the tiny little ones you can't really see.