Miles today: 23.2
Trail miles sum: 1665.2
Trail location: 2347.5
Elevation: 4765
Spinning on the turntable: Mozart: Piano Concertos #20 & 21
Epic view huh? I heard elk bellowing last night as I drifted to sleep. Someone saw a bear in this area so I’m keeping a watchful eye.
Such amazing views
It’s so crazy to walk around a corner, or reach the summit of a hill, and find another mountain peeking out. This is crazy beautiful.
I finally saw a mountain goat. Maybe.
Perhaps a mountain goat sighting
Or perhaps I should say that I saw a white blob that was moving around on a distant hill. I suppose it may have been a cow…
Chipmunk
I was shooting a picture of a chipmunk
when I noticed something else was photo bombing the picture!
Pine Martin
I moved closer and snapped this picture of what I believe is a Pine Martin. Oh my gosh it’s adorable! It didn’t seem bothered by my presence at all.
Burned out sections of forest
I spent several hours traveling through another burned out sections. Judging from the lack of ground cover and bark piles I think this fire occurred recently.
Thistle flower
Even with summer drawing to a close there’s still lots of flowers to enjoy.
Thistles but still blooming flowers!
White mushroom
I’d guess that this mushroom is at least 12 inches wide.
The smoke rolled in
In the late afternoon smoke started rolling into the area. I have no idea where it’s from, it could be from a mile away and it could be from 500 miles away.
I arrived at the Urich cabin late in the afternoon.
Urich cabin
I was startled to see that REI was setting up trail magic. I had planned to hike another few hours but burgers, soda and cookies kept me enthralled. They had a couple of corporate office staff manning the site. It was actually very cute. I believe their experience in providing trail magic was zero!
They shot pictures of each of us and asked a few questions about gear. I knew they had a lot more questions to ask but we (hikers) had full bellies and started disappearing into the woods, one by one.