Here’s a game I’ve been playing lately. It’s an entirely mental game that hardly affects the hiking. It’s called Race the Clock and it works like this: any time I stop, I check if I have yet hiked more miles than there have been hours since midnight. If so, I win. The earlier it happens the more I win. If I win and then take an hour break to let the clock get ahead, then I can win twice in the same day. This latter basically never happens because, although I usually win, it happens late in the afternoon or evening when there is not enough time to win again.
But one thing that helps with the winning earlier is getting up earlier. Getting up later is hard mode: the clock gets a big head start. If I were to start hiking at, say, 8 or 9, there’s no way I would win.
I woke up with the 5am alarm feeling fully awake and rested. I slept right through the first alarm. I fetched my full bag of water and spilled a little as I put it in my pack. A little turned into a great deal more by the time I had finished packing and saw that the entire back of the pack and the straps were soaked through because I hadn’t tightened the cap hard enough, or the hose had torqued it loose when I flipped the inner bag containing over to pack my bear can. Whatever the reason for the slow leak, I still had enough water for my next water break and the next section was fairly wet, so I didn’t worry about it. I just had to put up with wet shorts and constant dripping on the backs of my legs for the next several miles.
I hiked out just past 6 and immediately started climbing. It was two miles, less than an hour, to the crossing of Soda Fork on a slippery half-submerged log and subsequently the tiny log cabin where two other hikers who had spent the night there were just about packed up. (It’s an attractive campsite because it has bear boxes.)
Beyond that was an even steeper hill. In fact, it was the beginning of a long 2.5 mile climb, the first of two I would have to do this day. Halfway up, I passed a large boggy lake with a moose having breakfast in it.
I took my first morning break near the top of the climb. I sat on a log just close enough to the steep hill next to the trail to remain in its shadow just about as long as I breaked for. The sun was finally up and at ’em when I started down the other side of the hill.
At the bottom of the hill, about 4 miles later, I traded shoes for sockwas to cross the South Buffalo Fork, a much deeper swifter river than the North Buffalo Fork I crossed the previous evening. While I was changing into my shoes again in a little meadow above the south bank, a nobo arrived: Fastball from Montreal. I had planned to take my second morning break here and he decided to take lunch before crossing, so we chatted for quite a while. I got some info not only on the Winds but also on Montreal and Quebec City and a significant portion of Colorado as well. I tried to return the same in kind, but it was nearly lunchtime for me as well and I needed to earn it with some more hiking. I interrupted the water filtration I had started (on the water I had carried down from a creek up the hill) and hiked on south.
While we had been chatting, dark clouds had rolled in. I was a mile into my second big climb of the day (3 miles long) when it started sprinkling. It lasted long enough I thought I might should get out my Packa. And then I figured I might as well go ahead and have lunch while I was stopped even though it hadn’t even been an hour since my last break. But it was lunchtime.
Some fellow sobo passed me just as I was leaving, but I passed him back fetching water out of a creek a half mile later. I never saw him further down the trail.
After I came down the other side of my second big hill climb, I had to cross Cub Creek. Rather than take off my boots, I did a dry foot crossing in three parts further upstream.
The first tributary was an easy crossing, a log across the stream just below the trail. It put me on a sort of island, and I waded through tall bushes out to the point of it where the stream I had crossed met the main creek.
Here there were several boulders in the stream, and it was easy to step between them to the third, biggest one nearly to the other side. But between the last one and the far bank was a four foot gap with the deepest, swiftest water. I planted one trekking pole firmly on the far bank, one in the rocks at the bottom of the stream where it could hinge freely, and my forward foot on the top edge of the boulder. Then, after checking everything was ready to go three times because I only got one chance to stay dry… je me lance a la gloire okayyyyyy…
The third stream was mostly overgrown in the neck-high bushes, but once I found the one spot close to where it entered the main creek that it wasn’t completely overgrown, it was an easy step across. Another minute wading through the bush maze brought me back to the trail with my boots still on my feet and dry.
To celebrate this success, I stopped for dinner. While I cooked and ate, packed up and left, the same group of three riders passed me four times, twice in each direction. I don’t know if they were lost or just wanted to confuse their horses.
From there it was a short, easy climb to the pass that marked the wilderness boundary just above the head of Upper Brooks Lake. I had to stop in the next stretch to get out my Packa again and this time actually put it on. The rain decided to keep going this time. It continued for the next hour as I crossed the meadow separating Upper Brooks Lake from regular Brooks Lake. I think it was only at this late stage that I finally Beat the Clock for the day. It stopped just as I was coming around the lake into Brooks Lake campground. The kayakers fly fishing in the lake seemed unfazed whether it was raining or not.
The campground was a national forest fee campground but the sites were all full and there were no envelopes for the fee. I set up next to a picnic table, fire ring, and bear box on top of a hill with no walkway up to it associating it with a particular campsite. It may have belonged to the parking spot occupied by a trailer down the hill, but they clearly needed neither a bear box nor a picnic table.
Except for what I needed with me to sleep, I put everything, including my backpack and all its usual contents, inside the bear box before I went to bed.
This turned out to be a good decision. Around 11pm, a thunderstorm blew in, preceded by a few minutes of gale force winds. They woke me up in a heartbeat when they tore the stake at the foot of my tent right out of the ground so that my feet were the only thing keeping it erect. I fought my way out of my mummy bag and crawled out the back vestibule and grabbing a nearby rock to pound the stake back into the dirt. It was good hard dirt, not easy to put a stake into or pull it out of. It was just a really powerful gust of wind.
I dove back into the tent and resecured the vestibule rope just before the rain came. The wind had also blown my Tyvek porch up under the other vestibule and over my boot, so I pulled the other end in and over the other boot to match. I moved my socks from the foot of my tent to the side in case I hadn’t staked it out as well as I had before and hoped I would mostly stay dry through the night. I think the lightning passed in fifteen minutes or so, but I fell back to sleep within a few minutes.
Trail miles: 20.6
Distance to Dubois: 3 miles
feet wet again 
fastball 
I saw tons of these critters, but what are they 
upper brooks lake 
brooks lake 
If you did not see the videos the last two days, go back and look. They are there now.