Tuesday July 22, 20.8mi/33.5km

Ridge above Bitch Lake (518.3/6910ft) to Warm Springs Bar (498.0/3890ft) (ID) +0.5mi looking for junctions

I awoke to one of the coolest weather phenomena and one of my favorites, the undercast clouds.

It had rained pretty good last night for about 4 hours, so even though I shook off most of the water, I knew I would be making an extended lunch stop to dry my stuff. I was all packed up and ready to hike and then… I couldn’t find the trail junction. I have three different versions of maps downloaded and according to all of them, it should be right where I was camped. Ugh. So I walked a few minutes backtracking to check that I hadn’t missed it yesterday, nothing. And then I hiked a quarter mile further down the trail getting increasingly unsure that I would ever find it… and there it was, 0.3 miles from where it was supposed to be.

I continued to follow the Moose Ridge Trail all morning, except today it was actually nice trail.

I traveled through a half mile of burn section, where the trail was easy to follow, I just had to step over lots of fallen logs.

At least most of them were small and easy to step over. Pretty soon the burn area ended and then the sun even came out, warming the very chilly morning.

The next trail junction was exactly where it was supposed to be but the signs were a little hard to read.

I hiked over a pass and descended down toward Goat Creek, and most of the area was burned. But this time the trail seemed like it had recently been maintained and there were very few logs to step over.

And some massive mushrooms were growing also.

After crossing Goat Creek, I was out of the burn area, and followed Long Prairie Creek upstream for a while before I stopped for lunch.

I was surprised at how nice the trail was all afternoon, a friend had recently told me I should do more complaining in my journal but today didn’t give me much to complain about. Later in the afternoon I finally turned off the Moose Ridge Trail which I have been following since yesterday at the ranger station. There was a steep climb up the Grouse Ridge Trail, and then apparently I was following the Wilderness boundary for the next few hours.

It was a roller coaster of a trail going steeply up and down a couple of times, but always on good trail. I enjoyed seeing all the cool rock formations, I think it’s the same rock type as in Joshua Tree NP.

And the views of the Continental divide in the distant East were pretty amazing.

I turned onto the Patrol Ridge Trail, which started a long gradual descent, with an initial steep one.

And I was still on a pretty good trail the rest of the day.

There was an unsigned junction near the bottom of the descent, I was pretty sure it led to a hot spring, so I followed the trail and it did! It was a nice little homemade rock enclosure, almost a mile off the main trail. Pretty sweet little spot. The mosquitoes were starting to awaken, so after a quick soak I backtracked to the main trail and continued to its end at an outfitters camp.

I didn’t want to continue on because camping spots would be hard to come by in the next few miles, so I camped in a flat spot near the outfitters, next to Running Creek. I enjoyed an earlier evening in my tent with some nice spicy dinner.