Day 24 – 9/17/19

40.3 miles / 504.4 total

I had trouble falling asleep last night, full of anxiety about what to do given the weather forecast. I know myself well enough to know I don’t do well in the wet and cold. My hands go numb so easily, and being solo, there’s no one to help do my pack buckles or unwrap bars for me.

I decided the best thing to do was get up early and haul as much ass as possible. I started walked at 5:15am, headlamping it up the 4 miles of pavement and then back onto dirt roads.

Most of the day was dirt roads, though it required a lot of paying attention to not miss turns. I crested a hill and saw power lines and some sort of radio or cell towers. I took my phone out of airplane mode: 3 bars of LTE service! The best of the ODT!

My excitement was short lived, as I discovered I had missed a turn into a barely visible dirt road. I backtracked the quarter mile to the turnoff, and there went the cell service.

At 24 miles in (2pm), I did have a bail out option 3 miles and 2200’ down the Abert Rim. The hitch into Lakeview would’ve been much longer, but I could’ve zeroed the whole rainy Wednesday from the comfort of a hotel. But I’m also on a tight timeline for finish my hike. If I did that, I would be hard pressed to finish in time.

The other option I came up with last night looking at Gaia (topo maps on my phone) was to take a forest road from the top of Abert Rim all the way to the trail just 7ish miles from the highway into Lakeview via the usual spot. The designated ODT follows (mostly) real actual trail through the Fremont National Forest. Only 66 miles of the ODT are real trail, and here it goes high along some really nice peaks. It’s a huge shame to miss, but safety. I do not want to be on a 7700’ ridge walk while it’s 35deg and raining. The reroute is only a few miles shorter but a bit lower and (probably) faster walking.

I pushed hard to get as far as I could today while the weather was nice (not raining). I should have <9 miles to go tomorrow to make it to the highway. Hopefully the hitch will go easily!