Captain's Log: Day 63

June 14, 2016

We took a lazy morning at the campground after the long day and late-ish night. We worked on eating down extra food we had while I caught up on blog posts. We finally got going around 8:00am.

It was a 1.5 mile hike back up to the trail along which we held two pine cone races (whose pine cone makes it down a hill fastest). Along the short stretch down to the Sacremento River we met a family section hiking. They had started when the youngest daughter was 5! They gave us their number and told us to get in touch when we got further south and they would come pick us up. People are amazing.

We met two other north bound women from Canada before beginning then10 mile climb back out of the valley. They told us the caches in upcoming dry stretch were good leaving us even more inclined to disregard Quicksilver's warning about them being empty.

The climb itself was uneventful. The trail crew we had met yesterday had said it was in poor condition but there had very obviously been some recent trail work. The grade was gently and we just plodded along for the next few hours, each occupied by our own thoughts.

We created the ridge and descended to the Squaw Valley Creek. We were only 17 miles into the day but decided to call it there. The consecutive high mileage days had caught up with us.

We camped a short ways down a side trail at its trail head. There was flat tenting space and a pit toilet - not much more you can ask for. With rain expected for the next day and cloudy skies above we all pitched tents. It was relatively early so we took our time with dinner and sat around listening to an episode of the podcast The Memory Palace before retiring.