whitley gap shelter to blue mountain shelter

miles: 13.3

a blustery night with occasional rain. didn’t stop the owls from hooting almost the entire way through. i heard some barred owls earlier, but in the morning the calls were different. instead of “who cooks for you” it’s “hoot hoot hoothoot hoot hoot hoothoooot”. otherwise a very similar sounding bird.

woke up early and did some route planning. no major peaks today. the rain kept ian and beth in their tents late, so i was the first to leave. the weather was cool and foggy; perfect hiking weather. i saw a couple day hikers at hogpen gap, but otherwise didn’t see a soul all morning.

come midday i passed a few day hikers and one through hiker, an older woman i last saw on blood mountain.

around 13:30 i arrived at blue mountain shelter and had some lunch and tea. had good signal, so decided to call maggie. she’s having a rough time with the virus and is feeling under the weather. we talked for so long that the additional 8.1 miles to tray mountain shelter would put me there later than i’d like. additionally the sun came out and i was fearful of getting more sunburn.

i’m kind of annoyed with the sunburn. one of the rules of expedition behavior is “don’t get sunburned”, so it stings emotionally as wellas physically. i really expected to be hiking in long pants until the leaf cover was more substantial, but it was so hot yesterday. my right arm and right sides of my calves are pretty pink.

set up tent and as i was finishing up ian showed up. we chatted a bit and others started showing up. i asked roadhouse and gemma if they had seen my bandanna, but sadly no. roadhouse had an extra that he was about to send home. trail magic comes in all forms.

dinner was not at the shelter. seems like folks are in the know on COVID. we sat in a large circle and cooked our dinners. gemma is from australia and has been telling folks she wants the trail name “dingo”. it seems like folks weren’t into her picking her own trail name, because use was spotty. then tonight gemma made a knorr pesto pasta meal, but because we’re out here she didn’t add the milk or butter and made what she described as “pesto slime”. she kept going on about it and ian says if she keeps it up her name will be pesto slime. unfortunately for gemma hilarity ensued resulting in numerous laughing furs with gemma having to spit out the pesto slime that she finally accepted.

today didn’t have any views due to the fog, so i documented spring. it’s interesting, i feel like i’m walking into spring, but in reality spring is catching and passing me up.