The trail today could not have been any more different than yesterday. I kept waiting all morning for the blow downs to begin but thank the lord, they never appeared. The trail was even well-graded on the climbs... I kept having to check I was on the PNT since it was so nice. 

A con today was the smoke from the three forest fires south of us. The more we hiked east, the more dense the smoke became until at times it felt like we were hiking through clouds. Breathing became arduous on some of the small climbs at the end of the day. We also found out a day later about a massive fire raging in Canada just north of the border.

Another con was the swarms of biting flies that replaced the mosquitos. It made most of our water breaks extremely short since bug spray only sorta worked against them. 

Sandman and I both hit our hiking groove pretty much all day. We hiked over 41 miles and arrived at camp at the same time it took us to hike 31 miles yesterday. I struggled pretty hard between miles 30-36, but found my second wind in the final 5 miles of the day. 

We saw one group of hikers off in the distance on another trail, but that’s the only people we’ve seen since joining the PNT. One of my favorite parts about today was how quiet the environment around me was. The only sounds to be heard were birds chirping or the occasional squirrel moving about in the branches. I’ve also been almost entirely out of cell phone service for about 5 days since this part of the country is so remote.

Miles: 41.7

Total Miles: 2,827