Captain's Log: Day 48

May 30, 2016

True to the previous night's reading of the maps, the snow in morning was not too bad. Then it got bad. We clambered around the inside of shadow-covered bowls with only a general idea of where the trail was. We had given up on sticking to it as closely as possible an instead were taking the safest lines that went in roughly the right direction. This lead to a few dicey sections including a miscalculation that left us climbing vertically hand over hand 30 ft back to the trail.

The snow got better throughout the day, however, and eventually disappeared. Feeling elated we started up our own trail crew and began clearing the deadfall as we got to it instead of simply climbing over it. 7 miles later we had descended to a road that lead into Seiad Valley and could be used as a bail out point. We had been considering taking it but with the clear trail and fine weather we pushed onward.

After a nice climb up out from road we began passing our first alpine snow melt lakes. We reached Kangaroo Spring and camped there next to one such lake (well, really just a large pond). As the sun set we looked out over the mountains below us with Mt Shasta off in the distance, still watching over it all.