Sunday August 3, to Friday August 8 0mi/0km

We drove to a campground a couple hours away, it was windy and near a reservoir, with people playing music late into the night. It definitely didn’t feel like wilderness camping anymore! Despite that, I was energetic the next day and excited to be rock climbing again.

We spent a couple of days at City of Rocks, camping at a nearby paid campground with showers, which somehow was only $15 per site, so $5 each person. Amazing. On Tuesday we departed City of Rocks, and stopped for breakfast/ ice cream on our way to Bear Lake, Utah.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday crashing my friend Mark’s family reunion in Bear Lake. You couldn’t gather a nicer group of people if you tried.

Amazing dinners too.

We departed early Thursday morning to go climbing at “The Fins”, a small rock climbing area an hour south of Hailey ID.

We camped at a nice little free spot on Forest service land. There had been a windstorm while we were gone during the day, so all of our tents were covered in a thick layer of dust which took a while to clean. The sunset made up for it a little bit.

The next morning I discovered some friends had joined our campground.

We climbed for a couple of hours Friday morning, and then departed for Hailey to meet our friend Randi, who is visiting Idaho from the East Coast. On the way I mailed away my bear canister, I’m so happy I don’t have to carry that heavy thing anymore.

We had a nice dinner with Randi’s friends in Hailey, and then went out for a little more food and drinks.

Last dinner in civilization for a while! Starting tomorrow, the four of us will hike through part of the Sawtooths together for 4 days, with each of us exiting the Wilderness at different places/days.