- Miles 665.8 to 681.8 (16 miles)
- Total ascent 4439’; descent 5043’
I don’t particularly feel like writing this evening, after our rockiest, longest, sorest day in recent memory, but too many things demand to be written about.
First, the whippoorwill shouting its name so loudly I can scarcely think. I am not sure I have ever been so frustrated with a bird. Although whippoorwills occasionally sang at my parents’ old house, I can’t recall any keeping at it for an hour at this volume.
Next, the bear: I saw, or I’m at least 90% sure I saw, a small black bear looking at me from behind a log, perhaps 50 yards into the forest. I’d seen bear scat still fresh enough to gather flies a tenth of a mile back, so I had been keeping a keen eye out around me.
I told Rachel, then a few strides behind me, what I’d seen, and we hustled out of there. It was clear that the bear wanted nothing to do with us, but where there’s a small bear, there is likely to be a protective momma bear.
Much later in the day, perhaps 3 p.m., we saw the third item of interest: an oak tree to rival the Bur Oak in Missouri. This one, estimated in Guthook comments to be 300 years old and 18 feet in circumference, had eaten a fence many years ago on the edge of a cow pasture.
We spent a lot of time in cow pastures, among other unsavory terrain today. We climbed an awfully steep, non-staired and non-switchbacked mountainside up Kelly Knob, which had a rock top so overgrown we didn’t bother to get all the way across a slippery lookout.
We also did our share of stairs, which must have required quite the dynamite load to build from the cow pastures to the ridge. On the ridge, we saw what I thought were rock cairns but were, in fact, stone monuments made by early settlers to the area. Some had clearly been added to by hikers.
Water was an issue today, and especially in the afternoon. We camped at a weak spring, collected water at War Spur and Laurel Creek shelters, and still ran out by 5 p.m., before the staircase up the ridge I described earlier. There was technically water we could’ve collected partway through the final seven mile dry strech, but we worried that it was downhill from cow pastures. Even with the filter, we don’t drink any water we suspect to have fecal contamination.
It was hard not to “make miles” today, a mindset I want to avoid on the trail. The long day and late arrival to camp encouraged it, especially once we ran out of water. Whenever possible, we camp at a water source. We are also in a stretch with relatively little food, with one gas station in eight days of hiking.
The trail seems to be wearing on everyone a bit. As mentioned yesterday, We shared a campsite with a man, Nimble, who had knee issues and seemed upset with his wife for not visiting. At the shelter where we ate lunch, a woman who wanted to do 21 miles threw in the towel at around 15. Another couple said they didn’t want to do more miles today but needed to.
It is easy to let the discomfort and exhaustion become sour grapes. What is better — and not actually that difficult out here — is to think of it as all part of the experience.
We knew from the outset we would be sore and sweaty. Some days, hiking late is the plan. Someone got to camp at 9 p.m. yesterday, they told us tonight.
The point is, we knew what we were getting in taking this adventure. Minus the whippoorwill, which still won’t quit. Where are my ear plugs?
Next morning’s note: the chorus of birds was so thick last night my ears struggled to pick out particular songs. The whippoorwill came back for at least another hour while it was grey this morning, joined soon after by an owl. It is hard to believe that most everywhere in North America once sounded like this.
