Alright, so I need to preface today’s hike.   The goal is to do 30 miles, which means that I’m basically on my feet from 7am to 8+pm.   So I can forget about chatting up folks on the trail, etc.   It is just plug in the ear buds and make miles.  There are going to be many more days like this coming up.

That said, I got up, loaded and took off.   Racked the poles and started walking at a 3 mile ish pace.    

Soho got out ahead of me this morning.    The views were pretty good.

 Pre-Lunch was on a big rock along the trail.   I packed in a big block of cheese for this hike.   I carved off a couple big chunks and ate it with my bagel.    Put  mouthful or two of bacon bits on top of the melting cheese.   Yumm…..   I figure I can get a 3 or 4 days from my cheese block 🙂

Around 12:30 I ran into these folks. 

They are spending a couple weeks on the trail sawing blow-downs off.   They did a little bit of trail clearing as well.   I suppose I can deal with the copious amounts of horse crap I have to step over.   The lady to the right had met Soho a few minutes earlier.   She thought his accent was sooooooo cute.  Aww.    I personally identify best with the mangy dog.  He is definitely at the bottom rung of this operation and seems to know it. 

The trail was fairly level and padded with sand and needles.    Not too many rocky bits.    

I ran into Soho resting his feet at a spring.   He’s taking a 30 minute break.   WIth my pace, I can’t.   I stopped for a bit then kept rocking.   

Around 6:30 or so, it started raining.   Was a few blobs of rain clouds going over which built up to a decent continuous downpour.  Cool thing was that it was very localized.   I put my pack cover on and just kept walking.   Sweat.  Rain.  What’s the difference.

  The Sun was still out to the West.   Which gave me this 

Got to Cooper’s Meadow trail junction (1549) at 8ish.   There were two south bounders setup here.   One guy was watching the lighting strikes from our spot…which was totally exposed.   Fortunately the storm was moving away from us so I setup.  Soho turned up a few minutes later and we cooked and crashed.    

Made my first 30 miler.  I think I sustain this pace every other day or so if need be.   Feeling pretty happy.