Saturday August 30, 12.2mi/19.6km

Wells (1144.4/5660ft) to Angel Lake Campground (1133.6/8360ft) (NV) +1.4mi skip heinous xc

Even though I spent the night in a motel room, I was still naturally awake at 6 am. It was completely dark in the room but my body still knew it was sunrise time… “the sun’s awake so I’m awake”. After breakfast in the room and another shower, I spent another hour planning my various routes through this next section. There’s a bunch of options to get around/ through the East Humboldts, but no single route looks ideal. I mapped out like four different options, downloaded all the map layers and the satellite view, and called it good enough. I hiked the mile back across town to the route, where I spotted a welcome boulder.

The last business before leaving town was a Maverick, and their slogan is “Adventure’s first stop”. Well I’m on an adventure, so I had to stop in and get a milkshake, and a pumpkin spice cookie to go with it. It’s pumpkin spice season again!

I left there at 2:30, and then had a 12 mile paved roadwalk up to Angel Lake.

It wasn’t that hot, maybe 80°F, and I only saw a few cars per hour, so it was pretty relaxing. The mountains were getting closer…

And then I officially re-entered the national forest.

I arrived at the campground just before 7pm, and met the camp host, Gary. He’s originally from New York and was listening to the Yankees game on his radio, and after chatting for a while, we realized we had much in common– the Buffalo Bills, a mechanical engineering degree, hiking around Letchworth State park, and really missing Abbott’s frozen custard. And he was nice and pointed out that the campground was full on this holiday weekend, but I could squeeze into the maintenance campsite. It was nice to have dinner at a picnic table, but I ate quickly because it’s cold up here at 8300ft elevation!