Day 44: Crunch Farts
May 24, 2017
Mile 592.89 Campsite to Mile 608.90 Landers Trail Camp
I did 43 days on a third of a roll of toilet paper. Moving on. There was plenty of water today. As in copious amounts. Well, at least compared to the last couple days and what lies ahead. Our beautifully short day commenced with a 4:30 am wakeup call so we could get the bulk of our miles in before it got too hot.
The nice thing about waking up at the butt crack of dawn is undoubtedly the sunrise which I was able to witness perched on a rock while eatable Snickers bar. Life is good.
It was about nine miles to Robin Spring and I arrived around 9:30 to fill up and take the first of multiple extended breaks. Glow Worm and I were hoping to that Cougar and Dr. McDirty would catch us at some point. We think they may have camped about five miles behind us and thought that with our short day and long breaks that we’d all group up again. Unfortunately that never happened.
After the spring we hiked the two miles to Cottonwood Creek and used the even longer break to wash socks and feet and eat some lunch. I discovered while rummaging through my hip belt pocket that I somehow managed to bust open a honey packet and it had gotten all over my wallet and inside the pocket. After cleaning that up I tried to take a nap but the resident flies ensured that that was going to be impossible. At least it was only five more miles to camp and only 2:30.
KK and Joe, a couple of hikers we’ve been around lately, were already at the trail camp when we got there. We were there before 5:00 so we just hung out before setting up our sleeping bags to cowboy camp and make dinner. This trail camp is situated in a large pine forest which is refreshingly different from what we’ve been hiking in the last couple of days. For dinner I proudly made an otherwise miserably boring Alfredo pasta side tasty by adding crushed red pepper, soy sauce, and a sweet and spice salmon packet.
Tall bois.
Tomorrow we begin a 35 mile dry stretch. I have six liters capacity, but that’s not going be quite enough to get me there without doing some serious rationing. You’re never supposed to rely on water caches, but we’re really hoping that there’s going to be some full jugs of water somewhere between here and the next true water source.
Glow Worm is going to hate me for sharing this, but I laughed way too hard not to. So for whatever reason Glow Worm decided it would be a good idea to do crunches (as if hiking all day wasn’t enough, right?). I then commented that “whenever I do crunches I fart every single time” and as soon as I said that she let out a loud toot. I haven’t laughed that hard this whole trail. End blog post.
Bedtime water filtering.
