Another wake up call at 4am. As soon as we left the tents the mosquitoes were all over us going through the shirts as well. What a horrible start in the day… I ran out of curse words already before 5am 🙈 I probably put in 0.5 bonus miles this morning by trying to escape them. Well, we broke camp quickly and started running. Something which isn’t fair is that they attack you even when you are moving. When you stop, ok. But while you are moving.
And not talking about taking a poop… I didn’t do it in camp this morning. Impossible with all the mosquitoes! But after 30 mintues I had to. My body is just trained on this rhythm now… To make a long story short. I couldn’t even fold toilet paper without getting bitten. And an exposed butt is an easy target as well. So probably 30 bites later I was all sweaty on top from trying to do all things at the same time. The worst “shit” on the trail 😤😡👿☠️
Along the way we met two ladies who were hiking into the other direction. They gave us a quick update on what we had to expect. They also mentioned that there was still a lot of snow up there, that it was partly gnarly and sketchy and that it had taken them 4h for 3 miles. And then they closed the report by saying “…and we have mountaineering experience!”. What they did not say but implied was that this was fast and we will probably struggle even more. We thanked them went a bit further and bursted out laughing. The rest of the day we spent with making fun of what people declare themselves with. We also decided that as long as you don’t have a certificate and a badge it isn’t worth anything! And if they are not signed and engraved by the governor they ain’t worth shit at all… 😂 We probably spend two hours on the badges story, coming up with funny badges and whoever said anything was not believed until he would show the respective badge which would prove that he or she knew what she was talking about. And of course we checked for the engraving. It was a lot of fun…
Pee with a view! Felt like Lion King 🤘🏼
At the end there were a few snow patches and cutting steps were annoying but nothing dangerous 😉
Good views on Mt Shasta and 25 miles and 14h later we pitched the tents for the night. A long and hard day.
