i woke up to more clouds and realized that i had to backtrack to where the pct split from the trail where the footprints were. i got a little excited about having the prints in the snow and just blindly followed them probably a half mile in the wrong direction. after going back and heading up higher in the snow, i wrapped around the ridge and over another small pass (wishing i knew the names of them) i eventually started heading down in elevation and eventually got to bare trail which was really exciting.
i'm going to make this one short, it was a good day, crossing new bridges, old broken bridges, seeing signs to kennedy hot springs and ones that said that they were blasting around mill creek in 08 and 09.
oh wait, its coming back to me now, probably the toughest part of this section was around the mica lake area. it was pretty steep up there and i did a couple of long glissades down toward the lake, which was frozen over, but really beautiful. lots of snow, no views.
i descended towards milk creek where the trail was eventually snow free and very well maintained. there was a spot where i saw a split in the trail, but nothing was labeled so i continued down creek on the well maintained trail which lead to a bridge, but when i turned on the gps, i was off of the pct by quite a ways and just hoped that the trail would lead back up to it.
fortunately it did, although the trail was totally overgrown, it was raining and i was getting soaked. all i really wanted to do was find a flat spot and go to bed, but i also didn't want to leave all of this nasty wetness for tomorrow. needless to say i pushed on a little bit, found where the trail reconnected with the original which had signs posted and found a not so flat spot on the trail to struggle to set the tarp up and go to bed. the tarp fell over many times trying to put it up, i lost a stake, but i was able to stay warm and dry that night.
alright, i'm giving you all kinds of details that you don't need to really know, but it was a good day, a long one, but a good one, i just wish i