Day 28 – 9/21/19

28.3 mi / 591.2 total

I let myself sleep in with no alarm today and made it to 6:30am. Despite feeling absolutely wrecked, I didn’t sleep very well. Turns out the walls between rooms in this motel are very thin and I could hear someone next door snoring all. flippin. night.

I packed up, got coffee at the general store, and let the coffee do it’s work on my digestive system here in town so I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a place to poop in the first few miles out of town, which was a paved road walk.

The weather today was back to being lovely, a nearly cloudless sky with a high in the upper 60s. In the direct sun, this is actually quite warm, and I deployed the umbrella most of the day.

I tried to back off the pace a little bit today to conserve energy, while still wanting to push miles because tomorrow’s forecast calls for rain and I’m a wimp about that. It’s only 50 miles from Paisley to the next town, Christmas Valley, and I’ve already booked a room there.

There were a couple of muddy reservoirs today, but otherwise no water on trail, except…a cache! There are 2 water caches maintained by local trail angels in this section. It was so amazing to not have to drink the murky sludge from a reservoir or haul 2 days of water at a time. I picked up a gallon which will get me through to the next cache. Thank you whoever you are!

I also saw a bunch of wild horses today, and I ended up traveling xc off the primitive road I was on to stay far away from them. Back in Paisley this morning, I had read in the hiker logbook an account of someone being bluff charged by a stallion. I don’t want any part of that. I still had cell service and texted with Dan for reassurance that the horses weren’t going to kill me.

The rest of the day was spent cross country along the Diablo Rim. On the maps, this looked like a nice traverse along the top of a steep drop-off to the east. What I couldn’t tell from these very zoomed in maps was that there would also be a great view of the steep drop-off of Winter Ridge and Summer Lake below to the west, providing a lovely panorama which helped distract from the tedious walking over rocky ground.

I found a spot to squeeze my tent in among the sagebrush towards the southern end of Diablo Rim, and when I got up for my final pee before bed I noticed for the first time in weeks the sky was clear and the moon was not up yet. I grabbed my camera and made myself try a couple of quick night sky photos before crashing.