Since we had a big day ahead of us today we got up already at 5am and by 6am we were back on trail. There was no more thunderstorm and except for one curious deer we had a quiet night. Some hikers have already passed us early in the morning so I guess we weren’t the only one who got caught up in the thunderstorm and had to adjust their plans. When we were doing the first two climbs we were really happy with our yesterday’s decision. Those parts would have been super exposed and quite frankly dangerous to be in during a storm. We also passed a forest service guy who we chatted with for a second, really nice dude! Afterwards we hiked through the recent burn zone – the Summit fire – that was made just last month. Crazy. At the top of the climb we felt like being back in the Sierras. Northern California really has it all and somehow it has become my favorite section together with the Sierras. I really don’t get the NorCal “blues” concept. Personally this section has taught me so much.

We decided to have our lunch break at the end of the mountain ridge before descending down into the valley. Just in case there is another thunderstorm it would be better to be at a lower elevation then. Before the break we saw a helicopter with a water cistern flying nearby trying to put out a small fire that we could barely see. It is crazy, however, how many new fires are created after just one thunderstorm night. In the afternoon we were making our way down but we happened to be much slower because hundreds of blow-downs that were across the trail. Stefi was counting them for a while but after just 3 miles (4.8km) getting to more than 50 blow-downs she stopped. It was insane. Some were not so easy to cross so we had to bypass them or help ourselves in many different ways. Finally, at 7:30pm we made it to our tentsite, exhausted and hungry. We ate our dinner and then went to sleep. After all my phone was showing almost 48 km done (30miles) so we have definitely earned some rest.