Sorry for the late post. PIctures to be posted later.

We left Twisp, with the goal to hit the base of Washington-pass, or even a bit further. This would eliminate a lot of climbing and make the summet easier to hit because everything after Twisp was uphill. It was supposed to be an easy day.

Well, as most of our "rest days" go, this one was pretty tough. Good thing we broke this climb into two pieces because today we climbed over 2500 feet. The campground we aimed for turned out to be over a mile off route down a big gravel hill. The next one was only 6 miles further, but considerably further than we had originally wanted to go. Rather than a 1.2 mile gravel decent (and additional climb in the morning) we decided to go onward to Lone Pine Campground. I am not entirely sure, but I think we are at about 3500 feet now, leaving about 2000 feet to go in only 7 miles.

It was a lot more than we had originally planned. Our legs really could have used a rest day. Oh well, that makes tomorrow a lot shorter, although still a formidable climb. Hopefully it doesn't get too terribly cold tonight at this elevation. We have found it a lot more comfortable sleeping below 2500 feet.

We had breakfast in the hotel room, purchased the evening before at a grocier.

Winthrop is an interesting town, with quite a few tourist activities. This area has a ton of hiking, biking, and other outdoor activities and parks and trails. Pretty neat actually, but many require mountain bikes. Skiing is big here in winter. I found a new bike pump at a sporting goods store in Winthrop, and a new bike mirror at a bike shop just down the street. It will be nice to have 2 mirrors again....except this one is the same kind I have had sooo many failures with in the past. Oh well, it was all I have found. Darn cheap quality mirricycle mountain mirrors....

We had some fresh cherries and peaches from a produce stand as a snack. Good stuff.

We somehow missed our lunch stop, so we stopped at a resort that had a cafe. The cafe was only open for dinner, but their little store had enough to tide us over. The shopkeep gave us a big bowl of fruit for free, since it no longer looked good enough to put out on display. It was still great though.

With the last few miles being pretty steep, Katie and TJ went ahead to get us a campsite before they were booked up. They picked out 2 really nice sites.

This campground is pretty nice, although no showers. Their is a neat 0.4 mile paved hiking-biking trail, ending at a bridge that is in somewhat rough shape.

We made dinner, and hung our food bags. No bear boxes here. Yikes. My food bag hanging job is sub-par, hopefully it works. The bags are not quite 5 feet from either tree as suggested, and not quite 10 feet from the ground. We shall see!

Roger wouldn't let me hang the bags over his tent.

If I get hungry in the night, I can blame a bear. My stomach is already growling, and we just ate.

Hopefully the construction works to our benefit tomorrow as we cross our last mountain passes...everyone is excited yet there is an aire of disappointment already among the group that our adventure is coming to a close.

37 miles (1961 total)