Slow is The Way to Go

Day 123-August 14th
Destination: MM 2132ish
Miles: 14.5
Cumulative Miles: 1807.5

Sleeping in.
What joy it is.

Not that we really slept in that much, as our bodies are so adjusted to rising early, but rather that we woke with no sense of urgency, no sense that time was being wasted, no sense of needing to get "on with the show."

We built a small campfire this morning and drank coffee by it's smoldering flames, our bodies slowly waking after the long night. DK, now known as "Pseudo-Gnome" rose first. He wasn't around the tents when we popped our heads out, so he was likely admiring the morning light scattering through the trees across Ramona Falls.

The four of us slowly packed up camp, and wandered out close to 10am, following the creek down from the falls. The trail gently sloped down next to the creek, which seemed entirely too small for the size of the falls. Across the creek a massive rock wall paralleled us, flanked in it's departed rock masses.

When we reached the Muddy Fork, NaborJ planted the evil idea of walking out with him to his car so he could drive us to a point five miles ahead at Lolo Pass. This would help us skip a steep hot climb, and position us in such a way that water would not be a concern, something we were trying to figure out at the moment. Twenty miles without water is not too difficult if you are pulling 20 plus a day, but since we are not at the moment, we would be required to dry camp.

Eventually we decided that since we had hiked this section a couple times before, we wouldn't feel too guilty about skipping five miles. We left it to fate and flipped a coin; heads we hike, tails we skip five miles. It came up tails, so we hiked the 1.5 out to the car, netting us a loss of 3.5 miles, which we have easily made up for in the side trips for water.

Once dropped at Lolo Pass, we made a lunch and played 10,000 (a dice game) before starting our hike up into the Bull Run Watershed. Bull Run is the source of Portland's drinking water. About seven miles into the hike we found a saddle with a tiny campsite that would serve as our home for the night.

We played dice and cards in the wind, and struggled to limit our water consumption as it was a dry camp and we have about six miles to hike tomorrow.

We crawled into our tents before 8pm, and don't plan on emerging until twelve hours from now. This slower pace is allowing our bodies the rest they need, and while we have no doubt that "Pseudo-Gnome" can pull more miles, we don't want to, so we continue to take it easy.

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