It was another tough day on the CT, but man it was beautiful.

Today we hit the first wilderness area on the trail, the lost creek wilderness. This meant no bikes, hikers only. Yay! This also meant the trail did not even have to pretend to accomodate bikes, so it was super steep and rocky. Probably the steepest part of the trail so far. Boo!

Needless to say, it was a long, slow, steep, climb up and over lost creek. So. Very. Slow.

But I made it. Eventually.

Not having a filter was becoming a real pain in the butt. Not only because I was risking ingesting all manner of micro beasties, but it was also quite difficult to get water into my bottles, most of the water sources were glorified mud puddles. I’d need to sort that out as soon as possible.

After the steep climb the trail descended onto a glorious mountain meadow, with a creek merrily bubbling along at its centre. There were wildflowers everywhere and with every step butterflies would spring into the air, and chipmunks and squirrels would bound across the path in front of me. I felt like a Disney princess, a sweaty, smelly, foul mouthed princess. It was gorgeous.

The late afternoon sun was pretty hot and threatened to ruin my enjoyment somewhat, but clouds soon came along to block the deadly laser from burning me to a crisp.

I wanted to make as many miles as possible so as I could get to Kenosha pass tomorrow, but I was tired and chafed, so called it a day a few miles before my target.

I got a nice campsite next to the creek with a few other hikers nearby and watched the sunset over the meadow. All in all, it was a pretty good day.