Day 47 7/1 8 off trail miles 5 PCT miles

The three of us woke up and headed over to breakfast first thing in the morning. The restaurant was perfect, they gave us huge portions and all the food was delicious!  After our big breakfast we went back to the motel and sorted finished sorting through our packs and our resupply. We then checked out and got a few items from the grocery store for a small lunch once we got back to the trail head.

It took us about an hour to get a hitch even with cars going by the entire time! Eventually a guy named Tom stopped to pick us up. He was on his way home from vacation, he and his wife had spent the last two weeks backpacking through the alps. It was interesting hearing a few stories from his trip. Even though the trail head was about 10 miles out of his way he gave us a ride all the way up the mountain to the trail head. The entire ride took about 40 minutes, that was the longest hitch we have had thus far.

Soon after we started the climb back up and over kearsarge pass to the PCT we started passing a large group of other thru-hikers we had met about a week ago. They were all headed down to resupply. When I made it to the top I sat down to eat a snack, soon after I sat down I heard a loud swoosh!! and looked over to see a bird landing on a rock nearby. It seemed like it was falcon, when its wings were spread they kind of curved back towards the tail and ended in a point. There was a ranger nearby who I pointed it out to and he said  there are falcons in the area, anyway it was really neat to have a large bird swoop past me at such a high speed.

Well we made it over the first pass and back to the PCT without to many problems, but going up over the second pass of the day was quite a challenge.  Our legs were not to happy with us about climbing that much in one day with heavy packs. The going was slow, but we evetually made it over the next pass and down to the beautiful Rae lakes a little after dark, luckily there was a large moon so we didn't even have to wear our head lamps until we got into camp.