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.

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.

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…

I was shooting a picture of a chipmunk

when I noticed something else was photo bombing the picture!

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.

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.

Even with summer drawing to a close there’s still lots of flowers to enjoy.

I’d guess that this mushroom is at least 12 inches wide.

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.

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.