July 26

End: West Branch Nelson Creek
Daily: 23.4
Total: 1223.9

Today felt long. Part of that was because it was ALL UP. I swear. Even the downs felt like ups. That was partly because we had to deal with snow again. It will be so nice to be able to cruise again.

We woke up and climbed and climbed up Sierra Buttes. This area is really pretty because of the Buttes and because there are lots of sparkling blue lakes (far, far below us - we stayed on a ridge most of today).

One thing that was less than desirable was the crazy amount of roads around here. I can navigate on snow, because we just look for unnaturally straight lines - the bench of the trail, the circle of a cut log, a row of rocks, or a cut notch in a tree. But when we come to an intersection of roads, there are too many straight lines to choose from.

We met tons of people today - one guy from the county mental health department who was taking a bunch of kids out on a 12 day backpacking trip. Wow! Also a few dirtbikers and then an awesome family who immediately gave us beer! Chilidog and I had been talking about how we would drink any kind of beer, we just really wanted one, and lo and behold, a beer appears, as does a really cool family to talk to. They were from the Bay Area. I wish they'd stayed longer.

We cooked where that family was, then walked on another 4 miles. It was steep, snowy and dangerous. I'm glad we made it down, although the camping leaves a little to be desired.

Oh! We saw Dan and Sunshine (the elder) who were hiking southbound. They said there were only 80 people ahead of us. Out of 300-400, that's pretty good.