Journal Entries

Summited at about 10:30 AM. Feels good. Next, a long descent.

Plenty of snow to go over on the way up. We used our ice axes quite a bit. Luckily, the snow is soft enough to walk on comfortably, but not so soft that we post holed.

I felt about a million times better this morning, which is especially good since we have our biggest climb of the trip this morning. Wind River Peak, over 13100 feet high. I'm elated that the elevation isn't killing me this morning.

Made camp early, since to go any further we'd be ascending Wind River Peak. I'm pretty beat from hiking up to 10,500 feet today, so an early day is fine. I just hope I'll feel 90% better by tomorrow morning.

Easy hiking today, if you don't count the altitude. It's getting to me in a big way, which will hopefully wear off by tomorrow. Today is our last scheduled easy day. Tomorrow is a big climb over Wind River Peak. Lots of snow still up here...

Mike scored us a fine campsite, far off the trail, but close enough to the river for some nice white noise all night. The bugs are just starting to come out, but reports say it's going to get a lot worse. Bring it on!

I don't know what they look like later in the season, but the snow up high sure is making for some amazing waterworks.

The rivers and creeks are incredibly swollen right now. Apparently there's still a lot of snow up in the mountains

Jan dropped us off after helping shuttle the car from Trail Lakes, and some time hanging out in Lander. The first steps away from the car are always the hardest, but it didn't take long to feel some real joy knowing I'd soon be in some serious mountains.

Evening paddle on Casco Bay. I haven't been paddling nearly enough this season, and it looks like I won't have many more opportunities because of how busy I'll be for the rest of the summer. Maybe next year!