Fourth of July

7/4

20 miles (948 to 968, smedburg lake)

I pretty much forgot that today's the forth of July. It's a nice change from the craziness of being in Tahoe during the holiday. We saw fewer people today than we have in weeks. We are off the john muir trail, which is a very popular hiking trail that shares almost 200 miles with the pct, and we are deep into Yosemite far from any trailheads. 

I have been looking forward to this section to see what the northern part of Yosemite holds and how it connects to the forest surrounding the town I live in. So far I can tell it's going to be challenging. We did just as much climbing today as we did in the high Sierra and we have a similar day in store for us tomorrow. The biting flies came out today, I got to know these lovely creatures well during my time doing stream surveys. What I know is, they seem to have a season, hopefully a short one, and I hate them. So I went a little crazy today. 

We are going to try to pull 20s into Tahoe. We want to try to get there while our friends have days off to spend with us and I want clay to stop saying that we are going to slow to finish. We will see how it goes.