Day 104
Date: 13.08.2022
CDT Mile: Mile 2'079.6
Miles hiked: 17.1 miles / 27.4 km
Elevations: 3'054 feet ascent (931.5 m Aufstieg) / 1'677 feet descent (Abstieg 511.5 m)
Camping at: 7'802 feet / 2'379.6 m
We have a great breakfast at the hotel and while they others (Mouse, Cheetah and Captain) are still packing up, I leave to get resupply done. They have send themselves foodboxes and picked it up yesterday at the Post Office, so they don't have to worry about food anymore for the upcoming stretch. The grocery store is 1.8 miles up the highway. Even though having had a good night sleep in a very nice bed, I feel super tired today. I could sleep all day. I'm not really focused shopping food and don't get much. I do still have quite some food left and hope it will work out till we reach Lima in about 3 days.
I wait for my group to catch up outside the grocery store, as Smoothie and Vista show up too. They will stay in town today.
We hike out at lunch time, much later than I hoped for. But I am not motivated today, I am tired and in pain and the road we hike on in super boring. First, it is a paved road and after 2 miles it changes into a dirt road, where many pick-up's and OHV's pass us, leaving us in clouds of dust. We will not make it far today, none of us is motivated. But there is water in 12 miles from here, so at least that far we have to hike. After 10 miles we reach the junction to finally leave the dirt road and get onto a trail. We reach the headwaters of the Missouri River and follow along that river on a slightly hiked path or just bushwak it. However, we loose the trail, if there is even one and at around 3pm it starts to hail and rain. We quickly escape into some trees and wait out the storm for about 15 minutes. But only about an hour later, big rain drops fall onto us again. Again, we can hide under some trees, and at first it looks like we can stay kinda dry. We decided to use this time out and cook dinner, as we skipped lunch today on trail. But then it started to hail again and the wind direction changed. I just managed to boil water and add it to my dehydrated meal (and spilled half of my meal on the ground!), as there was no chance of being dry anymore. All of us got soaking wet. I had left my rain pants and jacket zipper a little open and forgot about it, and by the time I remembered it was too late. My clothes got wet already. It rained very heavily and changed between rain and hail. We all hide under a couple of trees, standing literally in the trees and very close next to each other. After 20 minutes the rain got less and we left our trees to eat. But that only lasted a couple of minutes, before the next storm and thunder rolled over. Again we all scrunched up below these trees, the best we could find. Being wet and not moving, we all got cold too. After about 1.5 hours, it still didn't stop raining, but it rained a little less, we decided to hike on again. There is no point in waiting here and getting colder. I am freezing already. Also, there is a lake with apparently good camping in about half a mile. We all just want to pitch our tents and get warm in our sleepingbags. But we are off trail and just bushwak, trying to find the lake. Captain, Cheetah and I slip and fall on that muddy ground, but all of us are ok. It is miserable. Really miserable. We wander around, cross a creek and hike over a hill till we finally find the lake. There is flat-ish ground and it looks like people have camped here before, as the gras is flat on some spots, but there are no trees where we could pitch our tents to be protected from the rain. But it looks like that's all we got. We decided to have enough of rain and call it a day. And while pitching our tents, the rain stopped. But only for about 30 minutes. Still, it was nice to have a break from the rain, specially while pitching the tent. We are all soaked and in this moist weather not even our hands dry. I hope the sun is out early tomorrow and it is warm so we can dry out all our gear. Even my foodbag is fully wet. Luckily my clothes and my sleepingbag, which I keep in my backpack are dry, as I keep them in a compactor bag in my backpack (which apparently is water resistant (yes I know, not water proof), but I don't see any of that, my backpack is soaked too). But my hiking clothes are soaked, will be great fun to put on wet and cold clothes tomorrow morning! Also, I am still hungry as half of my food spilled on the ground. But having already hang my foodbag, there is nothing I can eat, unless I leave my tent, go into the rain, undo my foodbag and eat something in the rain, hang it back up and get to my tent, most likely fully soaked again... so no, there is actually really no chance to get food at this moment. Oh and of top of that my rips or upper belly muscles still hurt enormously. I don't know what to do, but if it doesn't improve within the next couple of days I may have to go and see a doctor... What a fun day on trail today!
Post note: while checking our app we found out that we are actually just barley in Montana this night! So we already crossed another boarder and into the last state of the trail! However, we will hike along the Idaho/Montana boarder for a while, literally having one foot in Montana and the other in Idaho while hiking and some resupply towns being in Montana, others in Idaho. Also, we have crossed the 2'000 mile marker yesterday, which I did not even see while hiking. What a bummer. But less than 1'000 miles to go from now, yeaha!
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