Day 79: (14 miles)
mile 1018.5 – 1032.5

Up later than we planned, we pack and head to breakfast.  We talk and laugh until we realize we really must be getting back on the trail.  During this time I am able to add and upload our last completed post which almost brings us up to date.  The long drive up to the pass begins.  It’s been a truly wonderful two days.  We are lucky to have such good friends.  Terry drops us off, we make our farewells and somewhat begrudgingly start back on the trail.  Our packs are fully loaded with five days of food.  We think we may have gone a little overboard and might be carrying more food than we need, seeing how hungry we were last week.  Day three of last week we could have eaten ALL the food in our barrel, we were so hungry, but didn’t as we knew we needed to cover two more days.  Any who, we start our trek…aka, vitamin and climb 800+ ft.  The trail is relatively easy and our packs almost feel comfortable. We note that in all the blogs that we have read over the years, no one really writes about this section.  As we walk, we understand why.  While the scenery is beautiful, it is not breathtaking visually nor physically…and there are still patches of snow covering portions of the trail.

We wonder if we will have anything to really share about this section.  By now our loyal readers you should realize we are not ones to leave you disappointed.  Everyday is truly an adventure for us with something to report.  And yes we had a royal screw up and unknowingly left our phone on a rock during a break.  Luckily we are old and slow and some young buck, Colin from Minnesota, saw our phone and picked it up, as he probably saw our fresh tracks and/or heard me swearing at having to trudge through more darn snow.  As we were trying to relocate the trail, which was obscured by, go figure, snow, Colin appeared from behind us and asked if we were missing a phone.  That’s when we realized, yup, we left it on the rock.  Crap! Forgot to do our usual double check again.  Geez, you do over a 1000 miles and start to get complacent.  We thanked Colin and took possession of our phone.  True trail magic that was. Later we broke for lunch. By chance I spied Colin not more than 50 ft ahead of us on the trail taking a break as well.  Paul dug through our supplies and grabbed some snickers bars and walked over to Colin. He thanked Colin once again for finding our phone and presented him with the snickers bars.  Colin said “thanks” and then told Paul it was his birthday.  Well Happy Birthday Colin!  We continued along the trail…uneventfully for the remainder of the day and camped for the night.