This morning was hell on earth. The mosquitoes had positioned themselves already before we could get out of the tent – hundreds and hundreds of them. We tried to pack everything in the tent and only get out fully protected in rain
gear. But the vicious beasts went striaght for the few open spots – nose, cheeks, hands. Once you stopped moving for one second you had a hundred of them sitting on your pants and more flying around the face. I have never experienced mosquitoes so horrible. When we finally were ready to go I had already burned more calories than usually in the first 3h of hiking. The beauty of the lake only got a few seconds of attention.
Just to get an impression – this is what we walked through for the first ours of the day. A massive cloud of mosquitoes!
They were everywhere. It was so bad that I constantly even swallowed and inhaled them. And even with running you couldn’t shake them off. They got me probably about 60-70 times only in the morning. Everywhere. They go through my shirt so preferably they would go on my back and shoulders or straight for my face and head. I wanted to go for #2 but when I looked down my rain pants with probably 100 mosquitoes sitting on them already I decided to wait. This would have been way too painful.
I was just thinking about how much I was willing to pay for a bug net or anything which would help right now. At least 100$ or more… I had developed a technique by now where I would constantly swing a branch around my shoulders, neck and head to stop them from biting me. And then we ran into Doug & Dan – two section hikers from California. They saw our misery and offered us their insect repellent immediately. 100% deet – and it worked. Peace for the first time in four hours today. They even filled a bit of their second bottle into the empty first one they had and gave it to us. LIFESAFER!!! Thanks guys. Always when you expect it least – the trail will privide.
Once we got a bit higher we finally had some views agaim.
And then we hit one of the sections where we expected last bits of snow – Devils Peak. But the only snow which was left was on the steeper and from the sun sheltered north face.
We opted for glacading instead of walking – definitely the more fun and safer option here. We sat down and just sled down on our butts grabbing the poles very short and using them like an ice axe. Five minutes later our shorts were clean again and we were all the way down 🤘🏼😎
The morning had drained me – physically and mentally. So I was done in our lunch break. Luckily there is always somebody who has to document everything…
10 more miles and we were at 29 total for
the day again. We are crushing it. It’s really a lot of fun at the moment.
Tomorrow we will reach one of the highlights of the trail and something I have been looking forward to – “Crater Lake”. I am excited!!!
