Lights in the sky

June 17th, 2015

I woke up in the morning and my sleeping pad was leaking air. So during the night I had to get up and blow it up a couple times to keep off the cold ground.  There was also a swarm of mosquitoes outside my Bevi sack which I wasn't looking forward to facing. I had to get going so I climbed out of my sleeping bag and put my head net on an lathered my skin with deet (mosquito replant). 

I eventually got back on the trail and was surprised about how many more mosquitoes are in this area. I was hiking in a place called Mosquito Ridge and I growing up around this area and I never really connected Mosquito Ridge with lot of mosquitoes but we normally just drove through this area.

 After I got going on the trail I made it to Duncan Peak and then Robinson's flats where they have a nice water pump where you can get some fresh spring water. I took a break there and ate some food and then continued up the trail. The trail was nice in some ways because there were lots of wildflowers but in other ways it was not so nice. One of the reasons is because there were lots of fires up here so this trail was very exposed and very hot. The Western states trail at one point turned into sort of a motorcycle trail. This was pretty difficult to walk on because there are a lot of rocks that were between golf ball size and soft ball size. It was very easy to slip and made it very difficult to hike at a good pace. As I hiked I looked at the maps my map and the trail just followed a ridgeline which seem pretty dry.  As it got later I started worrying about water and by about 8 o'clock there was no water in sight.

I got off the trail and followed a dirt road hoping to find some water.  I hiked about 2 miles before I got to a place where a stream was supposed to be. When I looked at the stream it was very dry and I was devastated  but then I waited and listened and I heard a trickle. There was a spring that was coming up out of the ground and going into a culvert pipe. I started walking up the road and found a decent place to camp.  I hung my food and I was about to go to sleep when I looked up in the sky. I saw something that look like a satellite and then there was a flash of light. After that it disappeared. It is strange what you see sometimes in the night sky. I ended up going to sleep and having a good night after that except when I had to get up to blow up my sleeping pad yet again.