Woke up around 6:30, loaded up some fishy water, and headed out. Magic Marker was already gone when woke. I think she likes to hike early, take a long siesta, then hike some more in the evening. I probably passed her at some point, but didn’t see her all day. She mentioned last night that she had bounced a few miles ahead of the group she was hiking with to get out of the smoke from the fires going on south of here. I suspect most of the hiking bubble is behind me since I’ve seen almost nobody on the trail today.
Uneventful day. Just walking through some old burned areas and occasional shady forest. There is so much burned forest here. The only bonus is few skeeters. So either shade and skeeters or sun and heat.
Saw a grand total of 2 people today, both section hiking southbound. The big news for today is my spotify account stopped working saying it needs an internet connection to play my downloaded playlists. This thing drives me crazy…it must have some problem keeping up the DRM for a large cache of downloaded songs. Since I am now on Tmobile (they bought Sprint), I am blessed with zero phone service. So I am now stuck playing a few old albums I have saved on my phone with an application that is playing those songs in a random order. Have you ever listened to Dark side of the Moon in a random order? It really sucks.
To add to my misfortune today, I dropped my pack here for a little rest.
While I was eating some granola my pack fell over and took a couple of rolls down the slope before I stopped it. No biggie right? Well my bit valve to my platypus somehow got hooked on something and was thrown down the hill. I looked all over the place for it and never found it. Now I have a leaking tube. After some redneck repairs, I have a stopper taped up on the end of the hose which I remove to suck strait from the tube. It sortof works. It will have to cuz there’s no way I’ll replace it until I get to Bend.
On the positive side, my InReach is giving me some basic comms with my wife. $.40 per text, up to 160 characters. I try to use all 160 on a carefully composed message. Alice, on the other hand, sends me tons of one liners. I’m going to be racking up a big bill.
I switched packs for this hike. I decided to trade my almost 6 pound Baltero 60 pack for a 2 pound Osprey exos 58. The most noticeable difference is the Osprey has this trampoline like mesh on the back which allows your back to breath. I sweat a lot less now and consequently my water consumption has dropped by half. I carried 4 liters at the start of the day and skipped several water stops. When I finally filled up at Honeymoon Creek at 1802, I still had a liter left. Amazing.
I dry camped shortly after that at a small non-descript spot at 1803. I was not lonely, plenty of mosquitoes there to keep me company. Tomorrow I hit Mazama Village and hopefully get some good food!
