Second Day

Cappuccino and I were up at 5:45 with the sun. My thermometer read 49 degrees and the sky was clear. We retrieved our food sacks from where they were secured against bears and fixed breakfast as the sun lit the day. We got packed up and were heading out about 7:30.

We continued along Wildcat trail toward Wildcat Swamp. After one mile of faint trail through the forest we came to a bush filled “meadow.” The meadow turned out to be a bog and the trail went right through the middle. There was dew on the bushes and we were soaked by the time we got across. We were just starting to dry out when, a mile later, we came upon Wildcat Swamp.

It was a vast area and it was filled with mosquitoes and aquatic plants. The faint trail we had been on devolved completely and we just had to make our way through the brush and then forest for a couple more miles. Eventually we entered a burn area that had not been on my maps.

Unfortunately we would be in the burn for most of the rest of the day. If you think the heat, it was near 80, and the lack of shade would discourage the mosquitoes, think again. It did, however, discourage Cappuccino and me.

The trail continued to be elusive and the fire had rearranged the landscape so that we were essentially hiking cross county. Much of this was on very steep slopes after several miles of this we started picking up scraps of trail, fifty feet here, 30 feet there, which was a mild improvement.

After nine miles of hiking and a thousand feet of climbing, we dropped down to Spy Lake, an oasis in an incinerated landscape. There were still living trees close to the lake and we were finally able to fill our nearly empty water bottles. It was almost 3:00.

Cappuccino wanted to press on, so we hiked another mile in the heat. We got to Pete’s Lake and decided to stop for the day. between Spy and Pete’s lakes we left the burn area and were once again in living forest. But we were spent. Ten miles of unrelenting cross country backpacking up here is exhausting, besides it was almost 4:00 and we were ready to call it a day.

We are camped near Pete’s Lake’s unnamed companion lake tonight and are enjoying a pleasant breeze as a few clouds roll in. Tomorrow promises to be a cooler day and we could get some rain by Thursday.

Until tomorrow, Happy Trails!