It didn’t rain last night but Lil Flier had a party in the tent and we barely got any sleep.

Today we initially hoped to get to Independence but we realised last night it would be like 14 miles which is a little much for Secret. Even if we did it in a day we would arrive in the evening. We would rather take another day on trail and get to Independence earlier tomorrow so our town day is not rushed at bedtime. So the plan is to camp at the Kearsarge Lake tonight off the PCT, then head the rest of the day to town tomorrow.

It was a slow but pretty morning. I think Secret realized we weren’t hiking far. He hiked sloooow. But maybe we were both tired from last night.

We saw a nice mix of day hikers, PCT hikers (even some we haven’t seen in hundreds of miles!) and other backpackers.

The hike to the lake was easy but I could see and feel the clouds come in. We got no rain but it cooled down.

As we pulled in to the lake some scouts came in. Another group of backpackers told us the spot with their bear can on it is open – they just didn’t want the scouts grabbing it. So we got a pretty flat spot by them, boulders and the bear lockers.