PCT day 41 I awoke startled in the middle of the night to a thundering of footsteps a short ways from my tent. I grabbed my headlamp and peered out hoping to catch the culprit. Unfortunately I couldn’t see anything of note and just rolled over and went to bed. Then as I crawled out of my tent in the morning to a small cloud of mosquitos I heard something coming from the bushes. There was a deer not 10 feet from my tent. So we caught up over coffee before I had to start the day. Before I could even get through my hot beverage I was presented with a steep snow slope to navigate. The top layer of the snow was icy and slick with no previous foot prints to follow. I dug my foot in each step and slowly eased across the bank. As I descended on patchy snow I hoped with all my might this would be the end of the heavy snow. The day had a lot of up and and down with mosquitos always nipping at my heals. Near the end of the day I finished my first trip in way too long down to 3k feet elevation. Have no fear, I got to climb 3k feet back out of the valley housing the Feather River to end the day. Overall the snow really dissipated quickly after the morning and the terrain began to resemble Northern California much more. I was also able to put in a bigger day with considerably less snow: getting close to a 40 mile day again.
Miles 1218-1255
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