Mileage: 17 km

We got a relatively late start as we needed to pack up our car camping site first, but we managed to get to the trailhead at 9:30am and promptly started ascending to Bald Hills in the rain. It was somewhat steep, but easy walking as it followed an old fire road up the hill. As we neared the summit, we encountered several large groups of tourists – pretty impressed they still went out in the rain. We weren’t rewarded with views at the top because we were socked in with clouds, but we did get to start on a pretty awesome ridge walk leaving the main Bald Hills trail.

We soon reached a saddle on the ridge and made a mistake we’d spend most of the rest of the day fixing. I thought the saddle was where we would cut down to the south, unfortunately this was wrong and we were supposed to continue on the ridge for a ways more.

Once we realized the mistake, we wound up sidehilling through an annoyingly dense batch of trees until we finally descended enough to find an easy contour to follow. We eventually reconnected with the route at a pretty lake just below the pass we were supposed to descend.

Now that we were on the trail, it was pretty easy going over our second pass, although we would have appreciated a bit less rain.

With the rain seeming to not be going to stop, we decided to camp in a good flat spot we found before the third pass. It was only once we finally got everything setup and were starting to eat dinner that we finally got to see some blue sky and the rain stopped.

We were both still pretty soggy when we tucked into bed. Hopefully we dry off while we sleep and tomorrow is less wet!

• 

•