At South Brown Mountain Shelter, mile 1761

Got up this morning, and headed for the bushes, just uphill from the campsite. I took a trekking pole, because it was just steep enough to want one. When I had just finished, I felt a sharp pain. I flung my pole in surprise, and realized that yes, while in the bushes, I had been stung by a bee, in the…ankle. Sorry, not too interesting 😉 . I immediately headed back to camp, and administered some AfterBite and hydrocortisone.

Fast forward half an hour, and I was ready to go. Except that I was missing a pole. Uh oh. So I went up the hill, and aided by a Swiss couple, I eventually found it. Near a nest of ground bees, one of which nailed the Swiss guy. I almost walked into the nest, but he got my attention, and I very carefully backed away.

I was dragging for the first hour or so, even through the nearly flat stroll up to the trail. Par for the course, I guess. It’s still really frustrating, and is almost guaranteed to trigger self doubt. What do I think I’m even doing here? It’s pretty hard to beat back. But I put on my music, and that helped.

Today’s stretch was a reminder of some of last year’s hike. Pumice! Lava! But it was much easier tread, and it wasn’t nearly as hot and exposed as the stuff in central Oregon. I actually spent some time taking pictures.

I needed to load up on water, again five liters. I knew that I’d reach a cache at the end of the day; while you *never* rely on caches, multiple hikers saying there were multiple gallons is a pretty good indicator. There was supposed to be a spring near that, a few hundred yards off of the trail, but even with some decent bushwhacking I wasn’t able to find it. Oh well, I tried.

Just before the shelter, I found the cache and loaded up. I didn’t want to retrace my steps in the morning, so I filled up with everything I’d need through midday the next day.

At the shelter trail junction, I found an awesome sign!

South Brown Mountain Shelter has a few bunks, and a trail register. And, it appeared, a zillion mice and a few rats. So I signed the register, and beat a retreat.

There were a lot of tentsites, and an infamous pump. Apparently the pump handle has been broken all year, and the USFS hasn’t had time to come fix it. This is a pretty critical junction for water, at least for slower hikers, and the lack of handle has been mighty frustrating. Thank God for angels and their gift of a water cache!

So remember Old School? We met at the Diamond Lake trailhead four days ago. Turns out he made it through Section C, on the East Rim Drive, just as he planned. As a SOBO thru, he’s mighty fast, so he did 75 miles while I was having a zero and meandering down the trail. We talked about his hike, and found that both of us had been to Philmont. That’s always a great conversation topic!

We were joined by Josh (Just Josh, no trail name), and a kilt-wearing guy named Naked Ninja. I didn’t pursue that one, other than to say “nice kilt”. One other guy showed up just as I was crawling into the tent. It was a full house, so I skipped recording my blog entry…it gets a little awkward talking to myself. I’ll take care of that tomorrow.