8/18 - Thu - Friends Hut to Ute Trail
The outside of my sleeping bag was a little damp when I woke up, but the tarp worked great as a blanket, and I knew I would have time to dry out during the day. I try not to hike in my long johns much so they'll be dry when I'm trying to camp, but it seemed really cold, so I left them on when I started hiking. I followed some tread towards the Bush Creek Trail, but traversed when it started to drop because I was going up. It was still cold but very sunny once I got on trail and cut into a meadow. I saw frost on the plants once I got into the open, so it made sense why I was cold. Even going uphill in the sun, I didn't start shedding layers until close to 9.
The contour I followed to the hut was a little too low, so I had to climb back up. Got to Opa's Taylor around 10 and set some stuff out to dry on the deck. The hut & view were beautiful, so I hung out. Gently traversed the path of least resistance back to the trail, which I was getting very good at. I was thankful to get some of the best weather on the trip, as l was above treeline a lot of the day. It had gotten warm, but not as hot as it had been, plus I was above 10k’ all day.
After couple miles along the road from Opa's, I turned onto Express Creek Road and dropped to 10.5k' over 2 more miles to get to Markley. After a break there, I came back up and headed north to Gold Hill Road. The road rolled over some hills to Goodwin-Greene. I was loving the weather after so many rainy days, but I was starting to struggle with a cramping pain in the inside of my right quad by my knee as I was going downhill. I thought about filtering some water at the stream on the road but decided to find another because of the high alpine cows. High alpine beef was about the last thing I expected to see.
Once I got back onto Richmond Hill Road, I hobbled 3.5 mi to Barnard. That made it 24 hours and 8 minutes between the Brawn Huts at 28.4 mi. Fun. By this time, my quad hurt going up and down, and it wasn’t much better on flat ground. The 6.8 mi back to Ajax barely rolled, with about 1100’ of up and down, but it took me almost 3 hours. I filtered some water shortly after Barnard and figured I would find another stream before Ajax. I didn't.
People were still working by the Sundeck at 8 pm, so I didn't go over there. As I hiked down Ute Trail, I looked for a stream but saw nothing. I thought about grabbing a liter from the snowmaking pond, but it seemed like a bad idea with the super bright motion-sensing lights and I kept going. Didn't know where I could camp if I went all the way down to the trailhead, plus my quad was killing me. It didn’t seem like I would be able to tolerate the full 3300’ descent, so I stopped and camped near the end of the National Forest land above Bingo Glades at 9:20 pm with about a quarter liter of water. I ate a bunch of Doritos and fruit snacks because I couldn't cook, and was in zero pain when I wasn’t walking.
