Day 103 8/26 20mi.

We woke up and walked into an area that was closed because of a fire the day before, it was about a 30 mile stretch that we would have had to hitch around.

About six and a half miles into the day we came to a trail junction and stopped for a break. There we met a woman who put 50 items on her bucket list for her 50th birthday. One of those items was to climb Mt.Thielson she had her neighbor with her as well as to guys who are on the search and rescue team and volunteer to take people up the mountain about twice a year. After chatting with them for a bit they asked if we'd like to climb up with them, we declined and kept walking.

We didn't get very far, after 5 minutes of walking with views of the mountain I stopped and said to Chatterbox "that looks really cool and I might regret it if we don't do it" she said "well if you want to do it let's go" and so we went back up to the trail junction and stashed a few heavy items in the trees to lighten our packs, then headed up after them.

The trail slowly got steeper and steeper and we caught them about 3/4 of the way up, just before we had to put away our poles and start using our hands to help climb, because it was getting so steep.

All the way up the views just kept getting more and more spectacular. About 70 feet below the top we all stopped, from there on out we had to rock climb up to the summit. One of the guides free climbed up and secured a rope and then the bucket list woman and her neighbor took turns climbing up on rope and harness, they had never done any thing like this before just like we hadn't.  Next I free climbed up, which was a little scary but not to bad, they said the pitch was 5.2 which I don't think is much in the rock climbing world, but to us first timers it was crazy! Chatterbox climbed up last on rope and harness it felt great to be on top of that mountain!!! The views were a little smokey but still amazing and the mountain dropped off thousands of feet on 3 sides which was incredible. Neither of us had ever done anything like that, it was very physically and mentally challenging and extremely rewarding! Today was probably my favorite day of hiking.

The guide belayed both of us down, which was another first and we carefully started down the steep mountain sides. Going down was a bit tricky than coming up, but we took our time and eventually made it back to the trail junction for a late lunch. On the way down we saw a bald eagle soaring below us!

While eating lunch a bunch of hikers we knew caught up to us and were amazed that we climbed all the way to the top of the peak. We hiked with them late into the night and found a really nice campsote next to a lake for the night.