I ate breakfast at Shaws, home fries, blueberry pancakes, eggs and bacon, yum!
Then all the hikers grabbed shuttles to the trail, it was Lind of crazy how many hikers popped up, many I’d met along the way, but plenty of new faces too.
The trail was delightful and although hot (high of 80) a beautiful day. I came upon pond after pond, one had a great campsite that I would have been tempted to take if it wasn’t 11 AM. I took a break there and moved on.
I only planned 14 miles, and even though I got a later start, I wasn’t worried about time. I took a lot of breaks and little side trails and just enjoyed the day.
A bunch of us lunched at a waterfall that Poet (who works at Shaws) recommended. It was really nice but there was a strange number of non hikers there. When we left the waterfall there were even more people coming, apparently one of the side trails is only a mile to a trail head. I did not expect to see so many people on a weekday in that area.
The trail went up over a large hill and I passed a Boy Scout troop, that’s bad news, they were probably headed to the same lean to we were aiming for. I caught up to Beast and we agreed that finding a stealth site would be a better option.
I hiked along a river for a little bit and managed to find two swimming holes to dip in and cool off.
I crossed paths with a guy I saw at Shaws who was headed south (slackpacking) and he informed me that there was a nice site near the next waterfall, however when we got there, people were already camped.
We continued on to long pond stream where I followed a herd path and found us a nice tent site with a small swimming hole where I was able to rinse off again! It was a great start to the wilderness.