March 27, 2021
Mile 316.5
I didn’t sleep as well as I hoped I would with the brownie and alcohol (did I mention we were also drinking a lot of beer yesterday? RIP). I slept on the top bunk in the room with two sets of bunkbeds, but the room was kind of hot and stuffy, someone was snoring dangerously, and Oklahoma in the bunk below me was shifting around all night and shaking the whole damn bunk bed. He’d lucky he’s such a sweet guy or I might have thrown a pillow at his face. Oh well. At least I was in a comfortable bed. I’ll remember it fondly on trail when I’m waking up in the wee hours of the night to blow air back into my mattress. Patched the hole and the damn thing is still leaking air. Ugh.
Fresh blueberry muffins and frittatas for breakfast! We got our stuff around slowly. My feet are feeling good after being pampered yesterday, so hopefully they get me to the Roosevelt Lake Marina without incident. That’s where I’ll pick up my new shoes. I have to wait until we get to Pine to get my new air mattress. I guess there’s been a rise in price for the NeoAir X-Lite because the only place I could find that actually had them in stock was Amazon, and it was $200! Yikes! Oh well, what can you do? Once I get my new one, I’ll send this old one to the manufacturer to see if it can be repaired.
Anyway, Ghosthiker, Roam, Bass, and I got a ride to the trailhead first. We were on trail by 10:00am and did 16 miles for the day. It’s Saturday, so there were a lot of day and weekend hikers out. Most of the day felt pretty uneventful as far as the hiking part, although Ghosthiker did almost step on a rattle snake a few miles in from the trailhead. She jumped and yelled “rattle snake!” to warn me. I skirted around it and then we lingered because we knew there were hikers coming up behind us and we wanted to warn them as well. We couldn’t tell if it was a Mojave Rattlesnake, which we’d been told there’s no antivenom for if you get bit, so…that’s fun. Regardless, the maybe-a-mojave-rattlesnake-maybe-not was angry and hissing, so we kept our distance. Ghosthiker said if she gets bit by a rattlesnake or some other fatal accident befalls her, she’s counting on me to login to her Trail Journals account and post her final entry, and also to call her husband. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. (ಠ_ಠ)
We had quite a climb today. 3000 ft of elevation gained in 4 miles at an average 10.4% grade. The beer I packed out of Superior was worth it once we camped and it was dinner time, though. We were passed by a very tall hiker named Afterburner, who was very friendly and had two friends coming up behind him, but I don’t recall their names.
At the last water source before the saddle, Ghosthiker and I decided we had enough energy to hike on a little further. It was just too early in the day to set up camp yet. We ended up camping a little bit off trail right on the saddle. It’s a tight fit, but we made it work because we aren’t sure how far we’d have to go to find anywhere else to camp.
Bass stopped by to say hello at some point and then hiked on. Ghosthiker thinks he might be lonely, hiking solo. He seems to like hanging out with us.
Goodnight, ya’ll.
Sarah Hikes 
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