A jump start on the day, and A ridiculous amount of water

Miles 11.5

Camped at mile marker 20.2

We woke at 5:15 to get a jump start on the day. There was another hellstorm on the horizon, and we needed to make some miles. We were probably loud and a little obnoxious, but we needed to worry about us, after all, so we shook out our tents and our wet rain flys and packed up and took off. And we probably woke up everybody else, but they didn’t let on. And we walked all of 500 feet before we had to stop and unpack a bunch of stuff to get water for the day.

Packs heavy with water, we hiked straight uphill, then the trail leveled off just enough for us to catch our breath before heading straight uphill some more. The sunlight sprouted on the trees over there a ways, and we were grateful for the shade as we sweated our way along. We made it to the high point in time to pee and gnaw on some salami and then it was down down down to the South Fork of the Platte River where we filtered a ridiculous amount of water, crossed a fancy bridge, and started the long slog back up the other side.

It’s always uphill when you have a fresh refill of water, said Anji.

Yeah, I said.

And we kept slogging until it was raining and I was too tired to go on. Then a magical flat spot appeared and we took it. And as soon as we did, the clouds went away, and we dried out our tents from yesterday’s storm. We laid our bodies out in our respective tents and sighed a lot, beat the fuck up from our day. And so, so happy about it.