Woke up this morning and I grabbed my ice axe off to go take my morning dump. S ee if I could find the trail to the spring. An got to reading the notes we had written in our book, and got to looking at the map and I realized we were on just a totally different trail segment now than was in the old book. We were supposed to go by a different spring that was still yet ahead. So ah, we packed our stuff up, and walked a little down the trail, and sure enough this morning we got a little ways down and we saw below the trail a, a big trough full of water. And we were like, yeah, there it is, right on. And we went to look at the water, and it was not flowing. And it was black. And there was all sorts of bugs and stuff floating in it. And we actually got out the filter and tried to filter a little bit out, cause we really needed water at this point, we were dry. And ah, filtered some out and it was just… we shined a little headlight into it and it just looked green and nasty. And we filtered some out and it came out discolored. And we just decided that we could not drink it, and we were gettin bummed. We were gonna hafta hitchhike somewhere for water. But ah, Pete spotted a couple cairns up the trail a little ways. And we investigated a little higher up and sure enough, the actual spring source was up there. And there was some decent water yet, even though the spring was only flowing at a drip. So ah, we filtered out 4 liters of water, had ourselves a right fine breakfast of oatmeal and gorp, and a quarter-loaf of walnut-cinnamon-raisin bread with lots of peanut butter and cream cheese. And a couple newtons for dessert. And man, after all that fat we’re just feelin, feelin high on the horse this mornin! Ready to go! Probably ate more fat in that one meal than we ate all the way from Big Bear to Agua Dulce. And ah, yeah, it’s doing us good! We’re full of water, we’re full of good food, we’re looking forward to the rest of the day. The sun’s finally shining now, and ah, it’ll probably be gettin hot soon. We’ve got about 14 miles to go to the next water. So ah, that brings us up to date, it’s Saturday, May 11th, and we be truckin.

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Today is really Sunday May12th, but I think I, I need to make up for the lost pa rts of yesterday which were on the last tape. Um, May 11th. I recorded some in the morning, and we went on to continue a day of good eating. And ah, let’s see we made it… uh we just went on this trail that was seemingly endless contours. Before our siesta. We wanted to try a new schedule in which we would hike through the morning and then have a few hour siesta in the afternoon during the heat of the day. And hike into the evening and maybe into the night. When it was cool. So we tried that out with partial success. We got around about 14 miles, and the we headed down to a road where the San Francisquito Ranger Station is. And got some water there, and hung out, and I got a good nap and Pete got some of his chores done. And ah, got some water, and whiled away the heat of the day just like we’d planned, and then as it started to cool down, we even got some clouds which was really nice… we ahh took off back and started up a hill climb. And ah, really got… we were planning on making about 7 miles to the next water which we did, but ah, and we probably could’ve done it even during the light, but when the sun set, we decided to try stopping and cooking our dinner on the trail, and then walking. See if that was any better. And dinner on the trail was fine and it was really good: spaghetti and ah, sauce leather, and some spinach that Pete’s mom had dried, and a jalapeno, and two brownies for dessert, apiece. And ah, yeah, it was a fine end and continuation of uh four days of feasting on the trail. And ah, we made it to the spring by the… we had to walk the mile in the dark with the head lamps, and the trail wasn’t really very good for it. And our progress was slow, and we pretty much just used up batteries. (belch) And so we decided that the dinner at dusk, when the sun goes down, was really not all its cracked up to be. Its probably easier just to cook and eat dinner in the dark than it is to walk in the dark. So ah, but we did manage to find a really good camping spot by the, by the stream, and slept really well.