Wednesday August 27, 22.4mi/36.1km

Mary’s River TH (1204.0/6390ft) to Stormy Wash (1181.6/6170ft) (NV)

It had rained pretty steadily throughout the night until about 4 am, I had to zip up the tent fly, which I almost never do because it makes it quite humid inside. When I packed up from camp, I heard running water so I went to investigate. Mary’s River was no longer bone dry!

There was a decent amount of water coursing down the creek, I was quite surprised. I left camp and hiked all day on various dirt roads, which started off as rough 4wd roads.

The clouds overhead had completely obscured the mountaintops, and looked a little threatening, but it never rained on me all morning.

For today, the route was primarily trending East, toward the morning Sun.

The dark clouds kept shifting and moving, which definitely kept my attention. They were also fun to watch!

The 4wd road was a little hilly. Finally, after a couple hours, I left the foothills and the road started to flatten out.

The section of trail is pretty dry, the guidebook says there are no water sources between my camp this morning and a creek 28 miles away. However, I found a cow pond….with a cow literally standing in the murky water. No thanks.

It was dry all morning but around noon the clouds started to sprinkle a little bit. There were no trees around for miles, just sagebrush, but I did find some shelter behind a giant tractor tire. It was a surprisingly comfortable lunch spot.

I sat there for a while, and apparently when I’m not moving, the cows don’t recognize me as human. They approached much closer than they normally would have.

After lunch I continued on down a better dirt road, it sprinkled lightly for a couple of hours, just enough to be annoying. The umbrella has been my most valuable piece of equipment for this section.

I had been hiking toward this mountain all day, apparently it’s called stormy Mountain. The last few hours of the day were nice dry walking, and I noticed the clouds were even starting to clear up.

My hiking distance was limited by the location of public land, so I hiked as far as I could and then stopped just before the boundary. It was actually a pretty decent spot amongst all the sagebrush.

Hopefully it’s not windy tonight, the bushes aren’t big enough to be a windblock.