Day 76 – 7/7/13 – 20.6 mi (1291.1)

We’d arranged for one of Brynna’s friends, who just happened to newly own a shuttle bus, to take us all back to the trail at 8am. When the time came, Ninja and Sweetfish decided they weren’t ready to leave town yet. Now we were down to 4 (LoveNote, Stryder, Rockin and myself), and a shuttle bus no longer made much sense. Trent ended up taking us back to the pass in his car. Many thanks to Trent for letting us crash at his place and driving us around!

We got started about 10am and walked through a campground at Rabbit Ears Pass. The well timed privies were a welcome site after a morning of town food and coffee. My pack feels unusually heavy this leg, due to forgetting to mail my Nevernude costume home, carrying both my old and new Sawyer Squeeze water filters, and having picked up heavy (but delicious) pack-out food habits from LoveNote and Stryder. I’m going to have a shakedown and visit the post office in Encampment.

The miles were thankfully fairly flat and easy today, so we got in 20 even with the late start. Unfortunately, we were sharing the trail with lots of dirt bikers and ATVers, some courteous, some not. In the afternoon, we were annoyed when an ATV motored up from behind us. A few hundred yards down the trail, we saw him stopped, cutting a blowdown with a chainsaw. Hooray for recreational ATVers clearing the trail!

By far, the most noteworthy part of today was the onslaught of bloodthirsty mosquitos. We all suited up in our raingear or other bite proof layers. Stryder even wore mittens. I slathered what little skin I had exposed with Ultrathon DEET.

Aside from the hordes of mosquitos, our lakeside campsite tonight is pretty nice. I retreated to my tent for the night as soon as my dinner was done cooking.

The Sporadic Ninjup Report
Ninja and I are not hiking together frequently enough for me to give a daily update anymore. Henceforth, I’ll include this bit only when I have something to report.