As soon as I hit the trail this morning I noticed some fresh footprints that weren’t there the day before. Different brands of shoes have very distinct treads and I knew there were only 1 or 2 people who it could be. Just around the corner from my tent was another one. I wasn’t sure, but I think it belonged to a girl I met at the Toaster House.
The trail started by going through an old lava flow. Trail is a loose term for the series of cairns that led you over the collapsed lava tubes and general chaos of the flow.
After that, the trail opened up to more wide open space. I caught a glimpse of about 5 or 6 elk running off in the distance. It was a beautiful morning.
Today was going to be the start to my biggest water carry of the trail, 26 miles. This was a cow tank with a reputation for aggressive cows.
Sure enough, the cows didn’t want me to get any water and after filling only a single liter, they chased me off. This was a problem because my next reliable water was about 26 miles away. I looked at some comments in my app that mentioned water caches at some road crossings. Since the previous caches near here had been full, I decided to take a risk and go ahead.
After the first cache was empty, I realized I may have made a mistake. I kept checking different cow troughs that the trail passed by, but everything was dry. That’s when true trail magic happened.
For a few miles I had been following some mountain bike tracks. I’m not sure why anyone would bike this trail since it’s sandy, rocky, and involves going over lots of barbed wire fences. Thankfully they did ride it and at some point a FULL water bottle fell off their bike.
As I saw it sitting in the trail I couldn’t believe it. Literal trail magic. The water was hot and tasted like plastic, but that’s better than nothing. I could have made it to camp with that original liter of water, but this made my day feel a whole lot better.
As it got later, there was still one chance for a water cache and when I got there I found it fully stocked! I drank my fill and cooked dinner, planning on setting up camp nearby.
As I was packing up, Send It (the girl who I thought I saw this morning) came around the corner. She was pretty stoked about the water cache too.
There were some cows and crappy ground near the cache so we both hiked on a couple more miles to find a better campsite.
Part of the reason I was able to hike so much today was because it was cloudy and cool most of the day. In the distance, it looked like it could even be raining.
As I was setting up camp I heard a strange noise on my tent. It was raining. Not very hard, but some moisture is better than nothing. I can’t imagine this is enough to reopen the forests, but one can hope.