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| Ambrose insisted that we get up early on this trip. I held him to it this morning, which dawned with only some clouds. |
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| Scott Creek was a bit of a challenge to cross. |
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| The clouds began to descend. |
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| Ambrose wanted to stop and bivy after we crossed this creek. I went through without taking my shoes off and got all wet. |
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| The clouds didn’t care about how wet my feet were. |
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| Ambrose ended up getting his feet wet in this creek, too. As usual. |
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| But soon after the crossing, I spotted this campsite. And we stopped here for a couple hours, pitching the tent and getting everything out. But my feet never warmed up and we moved on – and it never even rained. |
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| The sun started to come out, and I began to thaw out a bit. |
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| But there was another crossing to wet my feet again. |
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| And then plenty of downed trees to climb over, crawl under or bypass. |
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| We made it to the Neinmeyer junction, but later than I’d hoped. |
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| Still some wildflowers blooming on the trail. |
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| No deer in the tarn this time. |
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| I hiked on by the junction for Scenic Lake ahead of Ambrose so he wouldn’t be tempted to stop there for the night. |
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| But I wanted to get up there. |
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| I tried to avoid stepping in the water to keep my feet dry. The day was still pretty cool even with the sun shining. |
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| But we were going to get up there. Somehow, I was going to get us up there. |
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| Even if Ambrose would rather have sat down and taken a nap. |
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| He wanted to camp at the base of the section of the trail that we call the ramp. But I couldn’t find a suitable spot to pitch the tent. So he sat and ate while I scouted. And then he recovered enough to go on – but only to the top of the ramp. |
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| I went ahead to the top of the ramp to find us a campsite for the night. |
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| It really doesn’t take that long. It’s steep, but short. |
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| And the trail has had some improvement since I last saw it. This bridge over the stream was totally new. |
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| And what used to be a decent flow of water was now a trickle. |
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| We camped near the Browns Lake junction. And Ambrose was beat. I wasn’t feeling so great myself, but I got to pitch the tent and fetch water – which I did at the Little Queens rather than the trickling stream. We gave some advice to passing hikers headed to Browns Lake after dinner. And then we slept, with a plan to head to Johnson Lake in the morning. |