August 4, 2016

Katy had to head back into town to pick up her replacement retainer. Looking at the map it was decided that she would take a access to back to the JMT and Sadie and I would meet her at that junction. She got on the bus into town and Sadie and I started hiking.

Burn area

The morning brought us through a burn area before it began climbing. The last day of hiking had been a steady drop down to Red's and that meant a climb back out. Both recent graduates, Sadie and I spent most of the morning talking about career path and what the next steps were for each of us. Eventually conversation died down as we each mulled over our own thoughts and we hiked onward in relative silence.

We arrived at the trail junction where we were to meet Katy early afternoon. She had not arrived yet so we plopped down to wait for her. Sadie had a Kindle with her and read. I laid down for a nap. We heard Katy before we saw her. She was belting songs as she headed down the trail. We gave her a moment for a break before continuing on towards camp.

Camp ended up being a shared campsite with a church youth group. Each group mostly kept to themselves until one of the chaperones, an older gentleman, came over to talk with us. We ended up talking for almost an hour about quite a lot and were joined by his daughter, in her last year of the program.

Dusk settled and the father and daughter returned to their camp. I had told Katy and Sadie that I would be picking up my pace to make it home earlier, but hadn't decided when I would be leaving them. I had spent some of the morning running the numbers and arrived at the conclusion that it had to be the next day. Part of it was timing for getting home in time, and part of it was based on how much food I could feasibly carry over the longer carries ahead of me. We celebrated the last evening together with freeze-dried apple cobbler.