The moon was bright last night, but a thick layer of smoke prevented much light from escaping.

I woke before the sun, made my coffee, packed up, and was on the trail by 7. Much of this section has been burned, and gave it an ugly exposed look that later turned uncomfortably hot with the lack of tree cover under the sun. Small stands of trees gave periodic relief, but overall I wasn’t much inspired by the devistated old forest.

Suprise lake was nice

I listened to a bunch of podcasts, and at one point thought a tree was falling, but it was a black bear I had scared; I barely saw his hairy butt as he went crashing through the underbrush. I know a lot of other hikers have seen bears in this section, so I was either playing my podcasts outloud or yelling “hey bear” periodically. I didn’t see any people today, so I didn’t have to worry about spoiling their wilderness experience with my noise.

There were a few nice rocky ridgewalks, but the terrain didn’t get really good until the end of the day as i got into more alpine meadows and trees again.

Good ending

Not sure what to say about today, I hiked, ate food, and now am camped. Just one of those days.