We got high!

Today we woke up before the crack of dawn (5:15am) and packed up our things, then said our goodbyes to George - the curious mouse who scurried over our gear. We hit the trail by 6:30 and the climbing began straight away. We were fortunate that we were hiking on the side of the mountain that was still hidden from the sun, so it provided us a great opportunity to get lots of cool, breezy miles in before the heat of sun got to us. We hiked through some gorgeous areas with massive boulders scattered everywhere. We took a short break about 2 hours in and the views were already amazing. The panoramas would only get better from that point. We hiked about 7 miles (mostly uphill) before getting more water. Bizzy ran down to Eagle spring, a quarter mile off trail. It wasn't the prettiest stuff, but we filtered it and it was ok. From there we descended all the way down to ~6000 feet at Fobes Saddle and had lunch and a rest before the big climb back up at around 7200 feet where we are now. At Apache Spring, Bizzy again ran down the half mile, 500 foot decent to get 5L of water and haul it back up. It took him 20 minutes and 43 seconds, obviously he timed it. After that, we hiked the last 2.7 beautifully amazing miles to our final camp spot at 172.2 miles and 7186 feet. Tomorrow morning we'll hammer out another 1000 or so feet uphill over 3 miles, the cruise the last 9 miles or so to Idyllwild via Devil's Slide Trail. We have a room booked at Idyllwild Inn for tomorrow night and a date with a shower and a laundry facility.

As much as we're looking forward to getting to a town (been about a week), we absolutely love sleeping outside, in a new spot every night. Tonight's spot is probably our favorite yet. We found a tiny spot, barely fits our tent, just off trail. Nice and secluded, and there was room for cooking beside us and everything!!