Miles: 686.7 | Exhaustion hangs heavy all day, the kind that turns emotions raw and makes everything feel close to the surface. A nap in the grass at the first view helps reset me just enough to keep going, and a plan forms to push hard to Niday Shelter so we can slackpack tomorrow. I hike alone for most of the day, listening to Levar Burton read stories that crack me wide open with homesickness and regret. The heat is relentless, the miles feel long, and then—unexpected trail magic—a bottle of water Miles filtered and left for me turns the whole day around. We roll into Niday tired but relieved, sharing camp with familiar faces as rain drifts in overnight.
We heard Grandma Shorty, Plod Along, and Savage pass camp in the morning. I was EXHAUSTED. I couldn’t sleep lately, which seemed to be a recurring problem. Miles and I hiked together to the first view. When we got there ow as so tired that I thought o could fall asleep right there. I put on his black rain coat and lay down in the grass near the cliff. He played chess on his phone while I napped for half an hour. When he woke me up later I felt so much better.
We ran into Savage on our way out of the view. If we made it to Niday Shelter today, Savage told us, we could hike just 1 Mile tomorrow to a gap where a hostel was coming to pick up packs to slackpack the 15.7 the rest of the way to the hostel. We had planned on staying at that hostel anyway. The more people that joined the cheaper it would be. As little as $4 per person! I agreed to join, which meant we needed to get to Niday Shelter, 18.3 miles up the trail that night.
I put in my headphones and listened to Levar Burton Reads. We walked separately to camp. I was having a bit of an emotional day. For some reason, everything made me want to cry. I was overtired and over emotional. I climbed over a tough, rocky ridge, listening to Levar read “The Paper Menagerie”. A story that made me wish I had treated my parents better. And made me realize how much they meant to me. After that I listened to him read a story called “Kin”. Both stories made me cry, it was that kind of day. I was really homesick. Overtired. I couldn’t function properly.
We walked through fields:
In the heat of mid day I came across the shelter between War Spur and Niday. This shelter was the only water source within 10 miles. I needed to get water here but didn’t want to hike the 0.7 miles down the steep trail to the water.
I bucked up and got ready mentally to go down and get water in the heat. As I came up to the shelter I saw a bottle sitting under the sign for the blue blaze. There was a bottle sitting there full of water that Miles had filtered for me. It made my whole day. I was so tired and it made that hike so much easier.
I got into camp a half hour after Miles and we shared his tent again. We made dinner and he hung our bear bags. Steamboat and Chomper rolled in not long after us. After them was Savage. Later Abab and Tiger Lily, Poe, Half Moon, and Rick James all made it there, too. Later in the evening Grandma Shorty and Plod Along got there to get water. They decided to push it the last mile or so to the gap where our packs were being picked up so they didn’t have to worry about getting up early to get there by 9am.
We went to bed as a small rain storm rolled in.