Day 124 (22 September)

Miles 2325.7 to 2347.0. Sheep Lake camp to Mike Urich cabin.

It was a rainy and windy night and therefore it’s not easy to get motivated and get up early in the morning. We make it out of our tent by 6.30am at last, tear down everything and start hikiing shortly after 7am.

It is still very cloudy and rainy, but at least it is not all uphill. We walk on several ridges and then decide to have breakfast on top of a mountain from where we have a beautiful view and meet Big Bro again here. We discuss sleeping options and decide to spend the night at the Mike Ulrich cabin, a shelter about 20 miles away from here. The main reason to stay there is because of the weather forecast which predicts heavy rain in the afternoon which will go on until the next day.

After our breakfast the terrain continues in moderate ups and downs. When we are hiking on the next ridge we suddenly hear voices and noises coming from behind us. Turns out that it’s Peachman, FreeWheel, Merman, Jandels and Montana! Man, does that group grow ever larger and larger! They caught up with us and plan to stay at the cabin as well. And so will Rocket and Flow. In total we will be at least 10 people! And we don’t know the size of the cabin. Well, somehow we will figure out a way for all of us to squeeze in, so no worries, we all think and hike on.

The weather is now turning worse and worse as it starts to rain heavily. It’s time for our rain gear once more. The rain gear is pretty good, however, it does not prevent the shoes from getting wet. They are soon soaking wet. Luckily the feet stay warm enough if we just keep hiking.

And so we continue hiking in these rather miserable conditions and get rewarded by seeing two gorgeous rainbows! We skip lunch today to make it to the cabin as fast as possible, as our feet feel like walking in a pool! There is water everywhere now on the trail, especially hiking in the woods is pretty shitty - there are thousands of small water pools and it is nearly impossible avoiding to step into them. And after a while we don’t even care about trying and evading them any more.

But then at 5.30pm we finally make it to the cabin. Big Bro and Benjamin Button are already here, hanging up their wet tents and trying to get a fire going. We have arrived before the big group and can choose to either stay on the floor or to spend the night upstairs on the gallery. The two BBs (Big Bro & Benjamin Button) and us decide to sleep upstairs. The big group arrives about one hour later and everyone has enough space to install themselves somewhere on the floor.

We all hang up our wet clothes and gear in the cabin, and with the fire the cabin soon starts to warm up. It’s now pretty cosy in this nice little shelter in the middle of nowhere!