​Another warm night, another night I wore my sleeping bag like a blanket. In 7 nights I have cowboy camped every night.

I was short on water again, having dry camped without picking up extra water at the last water source yesterday, but I made coffee and ate gronola with powdered milk anyway. I’ll have a few sips of water to get me to my next source…which if all goes well, is just 2 miles more down the trail. The first fall hiker last year didn’t find much water out here, but so many of the sources have been running for me that I’m starting to count on them.

Oh no…while writing this at the end of the day the air is suddenly filled with smoke…I looked up from my phone, and I’m totally surrounded by smoke. I am trying not to freak out….I don’t have reception where I am, so fired up my Delorum inreach to text kirk to see if he can tell me more. To freak out or not to freak out…

I ate lunch on Morgan Butte,  an active fire tower in the Fremont. The view was amazing and there was definitely no fire then. I didn’t talk to the lookout guy because it looked like he was busy, so just stopped to take photos. I definitely thought we were lucky to have no big fires out here this year. There have been a few little ones, just outside Paisley in fact…

I have been extremely careful with my cooking…no woodburning stove for me on this trip as they are banned due to extreme fire danger. In fact when I was caching water I wasn’t able to drive in as far as I would have liked because there were restrictions on driving on dirt roads where there are tall grasses…fire danger is no joke out here.

Before the smoke

I moved my camp to the gravel parking lot near the river….of all the places to be this is a pretty safe place. Let’s hope it’s far away and is put out quickly.

I can’t remember what happened today now. Doesn’t seem important. I’m 8 miles from Paisley, camping at Chewaucan Crossing.