We start slow this morning, not planning to hike far, maybe just 16 or 17 miles, as Yeti’s foot is still giving her trouble. We have a couple of water sources today with one about 14 miles away. We set this as our goal and then probably a bit further to find a good camp site.

We start the morning with a long climb up through the trees. Our efforts are reward with some spectacular pine and aspen forest walking once we get over the rise. Yeti just loves the smell, feel and sight of these types of forests. She is soon bubbling over with the happiness of the walk. For a while the pain in her leg is forgotten as we are treated to a truely magnificent morning walk. The air was crisp, the sun was warm and the scenery breath taking.

We stop for a breakfast break next to a dam that is a perfect horse camp. We sit there thinking about how we could bring horses in and then do day rides from this spot. All to soon it is time to move on and put away our day dreams.

After another very steep uphill we come to a beautiful little stream that becomes our home for lunch. Yeti starts to soak her foot while I start the process of filtering water.

We both would love to spend the night here but there are more miles to do before our day is done.

We spend the rest of the day hiking through the forest and eventually come down to relatively flat ranch land. The water report had a cattle trough that was our destination for the night. We got to the location of where the trough should be but could not find it. I plugged in the Coordinates from the water report and  they pointed to the road we were standing on. We looked around but could see nothing. We searched for a while and then decided that Yeti should setup camp while I continued to look. I set off with several water bags and the filter and must have covered about a mile looking for this tank. No luck!

I went back to the water report and looked at the references again. I noticed that the Bear Creek waypoint number and the Gut Hooks mile marker didn’t line up. I normally use the Gut Hooks miles and rarely look at the Bear Creek waypoints but in this case that was my problem. According to Bear Creek the water tanks was 1/2 mile further down the track from where Gut Hooks had it. I went back to Yeti and told her of my unsucseful hunt and my theory of where the tank was. It was getting dark and I was not sure I would be able to find the tank in the dark but decided to go looking as we would both feel a lot better knowing we had water for the next 15 miles.

Sure enough, behind the next clump of trees from where we had our camp I saw the tank. I filled up the dirty bag but because it was getting dark I headed back to camp. As I came into Yeti’s view I held my hunting trophy up so she could see we were saved. It was to late to make dinner so we celebrated having water by drinking our water and eating a packet of home made dried bananas.

Aspen grove