My feet felt pretty trashed last night, so I decided a “half-hike” was in order for today. That is, an easy day. I’d been meeting a few too many hikers lately who had serious ailments that were driving them off the trail.
So Tim and I stayed at the Comfort Inn until noon. I was mainly working on my laptop and going through work emails.
Time for the Half-Hike
At noon, we left for the Hwy. 87 trailhead. Tim dropped me off and I had to go back over the guardrail and crawl under the barbed wire fence. He was going to a trailhead about five miles ahead and would be hiking back toward me.
So, this passage goes through the Mazatzal Wilderness and is supposed to be hilly and tough. What’s new?! It started off OK — not that hilly or hard. But I wasn’t finding Tim. Oh no! I was mainly worried because the Tahoe he was driving was low on gas.
Found!
I finally found Tim, about an hour later than expected. He’d taken a wrong turn that cost a lot of time, so when he got back on the trail he had been going back and forth on this short stretch from the trailhead, not knowing where I was.
The plan was to hike another six miles, for about 11 today. As I said, a half-hike. But the trail got hard from here, mainly because it was so rocky. Tim’s Achilles pain flared up, so we stopped around mile eight when we found a nice camping spot.
Goodbye
We enjoyed a nice dinner and beautiful, fiery sunset. Tim surprised me with a Coke Zero at camp, plus we enjoyed some beers. He leaves 
tomorrow, which is sad. But Ed is coming Saturday!
Tim said he could not do this terrain for six weeks. He said he’s proud of me. Aww!
Oh, we ran into Bear Box today. He is bailing for several days because of leg pains. I feel badly for him. Cake is marching on solo. Such is this trail!
Snowshoe
8.2 miles today
358 miles to date
442 miles to go
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