Red's Meadow - Duck Creek

There's nothing like "real food" to power you through a day of hiking. We started the day with eggs, french toast, and hash browns at the Mulehouse Cafe at Red's Meadow. Delicious! All of our buddies were there as well, eating huge amounts of food. It was sad to leave Red's Meadow, but I felt way better about our chances of finishing the trip after our brief stay there.

We got on the trail around 9am, and started the day with an ascent through an area that was burned in the 1992 "Rainbow Fire." Burn zones are really interesting so far as seeing how the forest regenerates itself. We had a lot more uphill - a six mile, no water, dusty ridge hike. Our campsite is gorgeous, great views of the Silver Range and right above Duck Creek.

We had a little bit of a disaster when cooking dinner tonight. One of the plastic bags that held our dinner (miso tofu soup + instant brown rice) got a hole in it, spilling rice and soup mix onto the ground. Not the best if you are trying not to attract critters/bears to your campsite! Cleanup required a lot of grain by grain pick up - no fun. The meal was eventually salvaged, but dishes/clean up took a lot longer tonight. Tomorrow we tackle Silver Pass - we're hoping to get to the top and camp at a lake above 10,500 feet. Too high for mosquitoes!

[Lucy]
Miles: 11.4
Total: 70.1