Miles: 21 Steps: 45,431 Vertical gain: Strava knows Liquid consumed: 176oz Wildlife: Squirrels, chipmunks, ptarmigan Faith in Humanity: Met another CDT hiker! He's cool! Lack of faith: tons of gunshots fired fairly close to me. (I think from paved road too!) This morning was absolutely beautiful. I awoke and the trail quickly headed uphill. Up up up then you can see the goal: the top of Parkview Mountain! How to get there? Straight up the ridge, no trail. Parkview mountain had a neat emergency shelter at the summit as well. I didn't hang out long though as clouds were gathering earlier than usual today. The descent from the summit was really beautiful too: stark orange rock directly on the ridge. It was cool. Really cool! Next I met Jack, another hiker on the CDT! We took a break together and had a good chat. I liked Jack a lot, but he didn't seem to want to hike together or anything, which really is fine, so we hiked our own hikes. I ended up taking a really long break, then it seemed like a storm was imminent so I took off down the trail. At Willow Creek Pass where the trail crosses a road, I went a couple hundred more yards and took cover. The storm was right on me now: hail, hard rain, lightning and thunder close, etc. I just waited things out, know the trail only climbed from where I was. Now at this point the storm seemed to be ending, but I like to wait 20 minutes or so sometimes for good measure. Not today! A bunch of gunshots broke out and they didn't seem too far from me. Maybe they stopped at the road and just started opening fire???!!!! Regardless, that was my queue to leave, storm or no storm. It rained for quite a while. Lots of puddles on trail for the rest of the day. Found a great place to camp near a trail intersection and I quickly fell asleep after some dinner and relaxation. Well, another great day!