August 25

End: on a ridge near cowhorn mountain
Daily: 29.5
Total: 1888

Hooray I get to post from the trail again! No pictures til Bend, sorry.

We slept in til 6:30 today and left camp at 7:20, and it seemed like we just couldn't get the miles in at first. Part of the reason is that we spent over Hal an hour chatting with Mike, a retired guy who started as a thru and then got held up by snow, plus his wife and two friends. When we realizes that we'd only done 7.5 miles by 10 am (normally we've done at least 9) we decided to push and not have a morning break. We ended up making it to Maidu Lake for lunch, which was beautiful! Apparently the Umpqua River flows from the lake as well. For non-NW people, that's a relatively major river. 

Anyway, we took the side trail to Maidu so we didn't have to carry too much water (Six Horse Springs was supposed to be gross) and then intended to follow a connector trail back to the PCT. Well, we took the only trail we saw, which followed the lake, realized that wasn't the trail we wanted, then bushwhacked straight up the hill to find the connector. Found that - but it was really outsloped and not maintained. As we walked on we realized it REALLY hadn't been maintained in a while - like 20 years at least. There were good sized trees growing in the middle of the bench and other trees in the later stages of decomposition lying across it. So we continued to bushwhack along the trail until we got home sweet long, skinny home: the PCT. 

Anyway, the rest of the day was easy. We made miles so quick - 4 miles an hour sometimes. We ran into Spicerack at Windigo Pass, who we hadn't seen since Kennedy Meadows south (702). So good to see him. Sounds like we will be for a while - he's going around our pace.

Anyway, then sprinkles while climbing the hill to camp and now a camp with an awesome view of Cowhorn Mountain (Thielsen this morning was also crazy looking). Tons of bugs. We need some repellent.