Daily mileage: 29
Mile 1936-1965
My plan is to get to Sisters by Thursday. I would prefer to do as few miles as possible that morning so I can get all my stuff done and get back to the trail that night. So my plan was to do 32 and 33 miles over the next 2 days which should have worked out pretty well. Alas it was not to be.
I woke up in the middle of the night to discover my left eye had swollen shut, and wow did it hurt! Well nothing to do about it at 2 am so back to sleep. I've been failing lately at leaving camp early. I still wake up at 5 but it's so hard to jump out of bed. At 5:15 it was 35 degrees, my tent had a ton of condensation and I could only see out of a small slit that used to be my fully functioning left eye.
Yeah, not an early morning for me.
I hit the trail sometime after 6 stubbornly not taking any medications that might help with the swelling or pain in my eye. Through the forest the trail wound, trees, trees more trees and a whole mess of ponds filled my morning. All frequently inhabited by swarms of mosquitoes. Relaxing breaks, not an option.
As my eye continued to hurt and tear up I gave in and desperately took a Benadryl. Shocker of shocks when I finally found a spot that seemed mostly mosquito free I promptly fell asleep. I had been rather groggy since the Benadryl which is why I hadn't wanted to take it. At least the swelling went down a bit, still hurt though. Whatever bit me or stung me or somehow made my eyelid swell shut, you are in the doghouse, I am so not a big fan of yours.
Still feeling groggy I continued hiking. Miles slowly passed, with lakes and ponds everywhere in the forest.
At some point I finally rounded a corner to find myself in a burn with mountains visible! It was so nice to see mountains as I started climbing.
A fun thing that happened during this climb, yup I officially have less than 700 miles to go. So crazy.
Made it to the top with small glimpses of mountains and more patchy snow as I headed down. And the mosquitoes were swarming.
At 8 I made it to Sisters Mirror Lake, a pretty nice spot. I could have kept going a bit longer but decided to call it an early night. Set up my tent and very happily read a bit before crashing.
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