Captain's Log: Day 56

June 7, 2016

It was a slow morning as Rickets had to repackage all our food. Once on the trail we spent the morning walking through the remnants of a burn a few years before. We crossed over the creek a few times. The wooden bridges were intact for the first two crossings. The third was had been badly burned and washed out and the fourth was nonexistent aside from the foundations.

Then began the 5000ft climb back up to the crest. The forest got progressively thinner and less affected by the burn and it was nice hiking aside from the humidity. We crossed paths with a nobo hiker, Brad, who had been pulling huge miles from Campo and warned of a bit of snow coming up.

Once at the top we took a break under a big evergreen near a spring. The break turned into nap time for Rickets and Loopy. Occasionally we would hear a helicopter overhead carrying water to a forest fire starting two ridges over.

In the afternoon we met another nobo hiker, Nick, who gave a more detailed warning of the snow coming up. It sounded pretty dire; he spoke of needing to climb up a hundred feet of snow to the ridge and following that because following the trail was too dangerous.

We walked through some beautiful red rock crags along trails with some amazing stonework. A huge thank you to the trail crews in that area! We arrived at Paradise Lake and camped on the shore. There were quite a few bugs but also a beautiful view of the snow melt waterfalls from the ridge above flowing down into the lake.