Had a nice sleep in, wasn't in any hurry. I thought it might be sunny out and eventually unzipped my tent to reveal that yes, the sun was partially out. There were still heavy clouds to the west, but it looked like it would be partially sunny this morning at least.

Got stuff packed up and went and sat on a log to put on my shoes. As I was lacing up my shoes I started to hear a crunching sound in front of me. I looked up just in time to see a rotted tree fall to its death. Since I was there to see it, yes, it did make a sound. This is the first time I think I have ever seen a tree fall in the woods without human intervention.

I went across the ravine and found where the tree was. It had no branches or anything left, it looked like it had died decades earlier it was so weathered.

As I was walking back from the tree across the ravine, I saw some wispy clouds rapidly moving over the top of Mt. Adams. It looked like a bad time to be on top. Both times I have climbed Adams (south and east technical routes) it has been pretty nice on top, so I can't imagine what it would be like now up there.

Decided to get some video of the clouds. Got on the trail around 9:30, stopped again at 9:45am to get some more video of a silty creek. I had nearly 1/2 mile in by 10:00am. It is nice being able to care less about this sort of thing now that I have a decent window available of getting to Canada before the snow comes. (still crossing fingers). Ten miles before 10:00am was considered a really good morning back in California.

Saw a few weekend hikers here and there. The next few hours were uneventful. Well, I did have my tripod setup at a creek and when I walked back to it, my backpack started to fall over on its own...right at the tripod. Fortunately I was there and caught the backpack.

Stopped at Lava Spring and had chili for lunch. The spring was cool (literally too) in that it came right out from under the huge field of lava rocks.

As I was tying my shoes at a trailhead a guy came by on a scooter loaded down with camping gear. I said hello and he just nodded. As I was walking away he ended up parking. I know that is the first time I have ever seen a little scooter be used as a trailhead vehicle.

Passed a large group of people/kids that were walking from the Mt. Adams area to White Pass. Later on there were four southbound ladies in their late 50's. I got off the trail and they didn't see me until the last second. The topic of conversation was a trowel.

"Do you have the trowel?"

"No"

"Can you feel in my pack and see if it is there?"

The last two ladies looked at me and one asked if I was enjoying their trowel talk. I told them I was in fact enjoying it since it was unique. They had stopped to locate the trowel. I stood there and told them I had to now find out if the trowel was in fact, accounted for. The fourth woman confirmed the possession of the trowel in the third woman's pack. All was well.

The trail passed a bunch of mostly bug-free ponds. Rainier was still hiding in the clouds.

Around 5:00pm I realized that yes, digestion does in fact take three hours because now the chili was having its expected after effect. Ugh.

Around 6:30 a campsite and stream popped up. I decided to call it a day there. Such a luxury. Normally I would have been walking until dark.

Tomorrow it looks like around 18 miles to where I want to camp on Old Snowy Mountain. I will have to figure out something else though if the weather is bad. I don't really want to be stuck up there in a storm. There isn't really any place to camp about seven miles or so after that either.

Changed my process a bit for updating this blog. For the last two days I have gone through each day's photos and queued them up for sending. Upside is that I can do the blog updates faster, downside is that I will have to use web mail to send any email since my outbox is currently clogged up with 162 photos waiting to go out.

Ok, dinner and then bedtime. It sure is dark much earlier now. It is 8:32pm now and I would need to have a headlamp on when hiking...didn't need to do that a couple months ago, you could push it to 9:30 on some nights. Ok, now really it is dinner and then bedtime.