This part was 2.1 miles, 226’ ascent, 649’ descent, 2:19 elapsed time.
Turning sharply right (East) the trail started down, a nice change after the climb.
At the end of this section, the trail tees into Red Tanks Trail. It also crosses the Barge Creek here. This would be the first of many, many times I crossed the Barge, as I followed it the rest of this day and a good part of the next. The guy I had met had told me that I’d pass several stagnant pools of water, and then I’d find a flow. He was right, and I ended up unpacking here for lunch, to pump water, and to dry out my shirt. He came along as I was eating and we chatted some more. I got the impression that he had been out in the “out there” long enough that he almost wanted to have a little company.
My lunch spot was about 6.8 miles into the trip, having 3:50 moving time, 1383’ ascent, and 2798’ elevation.
He also told me that I could have brought my hammock, that I probably would have been able to find a place to hang it. He said there were lots of trees near where the springs were, but it might be too buggy. My outdoor hammock has an integrated bug top, so bugs wouldn’t be an issue. As I started seeing trees, I was kicking myself for not bringing my hammock. It only weighs just under 2 pounds. At this point, it didn’t matter, because I didn’t have it with me.
Along the way, I found these spots:
If the boulders weren’t so huge, you would think this a cairn
I’m not thirsty enough to taste that! And this was the place I thought might be option 1 for spending my first night. Good thing my plan had lots of options (not that I exercised any of them…)
Or that
Or that
Or even that
Nope!
But this was tasty!!!
I left the car with 2 quarts (4 pounds) of water. I had drank a little thus far, but when I got here, I drank those 2 quarts and another, and filled my bottles for the afternoon.
At some point, I began to think I was suffering from beauty overload. Kind of like information overload, but with beautiful scenes. They are so large, and so real, and so present, it just blows you away. You could ponder for weeks on just what substance or force had kept that one column of rock from eroding away all the rock around it.