Friday, July 20

We started today by hiking to Miner's Park to get re-supplied with food.  We all both like and dislike re-supply days.  We like them as we all get a choice of flavored milk and fresh fruit (apples, oranges, and pears).  We dislike them as we now carry heavy packs for 1-1/2 days with all the extra food...

As we were filling up with water, several mule deer came for a visit.  We were within 3 to 4 feet of the deer and sharing the same water with them.  All the boys really enjoyed the visit....

As we were leaving Miner's Park, most of us got to witness a World's Funniest Video perfromance by Jared.  Who else, right?  He took off to throw away some trash, jumped over a rock, tripped, bounded to the left, adjusted and bounded to the right, adjusted one more time and bounded to the right and landed on his backpack.  A scary sight until we saw that he was ok, and then all laughed including Jared.  A sight we will never forget for sure!

As we left Miner's Park, we took a side hike that added to our hiking mileage for Rock Climbing before heading to Shafer's Pass for the night.  All had fun climbing except for a couple who were not feeling well that afternoon...  The side hike was mostly uphill to the climbing site.  Luckily, our crew did not have to wait too long to climb as we had a pretty long hike from there to our campsite.

We got back on the trail for a bit and then stopped for lunch.  We ate lunch, filtered water and topped everyone off, and took a little break.  Several of the boys took a little nap.  Sean slept so sound that a mini bear ran across him looking for food, and it did not even wake him up...

We headed to our campsite after lunch.  The hike was long, hilly, rocky with a lot of switchbacks that took us over 8,000' for the first time in our trek.  We camped at Shafer's Pass, and were one of the last into the site, so had to hike toward the end of the site for our spot. 

We took a quick breath, set up our tents, and then ate dinner as the sun was setting.  We saw another small group of mule deer that strolled through our site at dusk.  This was our longest day on the trail  to date (around 9 or so miles including the side hike), which was followed by a very early and long day....  All were wore out from this long day, knew they had another long one ahead that was to start very early, so all adjourned to their tents for a good recovery night and slept well!