Day 77 (6 August)

Miles 1172.3 to 1191.5. Bushcamp to Milton Creek Camp.

I had a pretty restless night, not being able to lie comfortably on the mattress with this lower back pain. And I am really worried that as soon as I wake up in the morning I will still feel the pain. So when our alarm clock rings at 6am I try to get up - and the pain is gone completely!! I don‘t know what it was, but I am so happy and relieved it‘s gone!

We get going with Sweatheart while Flamin eats his breakfast in camp. We take our breakfast about an hour later on an exposed ridge with beautiful views on both sides. I really dig this trail family thing we‘ve got going. They are both so sweet, relaxed and funny and we can spend hours just sharing stories and laughing.

We actually take our lunch break not much later at a water source and are all not too eager to start hiking again. But we want to make it to Sierra City early the day after tomorrow and the thought of burgers, cold sodas and a shower finally gets us going again.

Dario and I pretty much hike by ourselves in the afternoon, the other two unfortunately are both injured (knee and foot arch) and are taking it slower. By the time we arrive at our camp next to Milton Creek it‘s already getting dark. We wash ourselves in the ice cold water and then quickly hurry inside our tent as there are quite a lot of mozzies around. The others haven‘t shown up and we hope that everything is fine but just assume that they stayed at the previous campsite seeing as they were both not feeling it today.

For us it means a 4 mile downhill hike into Sierra City tomorrow! We will get up at 7am and hope to make it to town by 9am for when the store opens (where they also sell breakfast).