Miles: 27 Steps: 55,733 Vertical gain: Strava Knows Liquid consumed: 146oz Wildlife: So many Pika! It was awesome, marmot, pocket gopher, gray birds getting all close when I'm eating Faith in Humanity: a Colorado Trail cyclist stopped and talked to me for a bit and he was really nice! Should have gotten his name, oops! So I woke up super early since the forecast was pretty miserable today: heavy rain and scattered thunderstorms. It was cold but felt nice climbing above treeline first thing in the morning. Such a beautiful alpine area between Searl and Kokomo passes! Camp Hale is an old military base??? With all of these signs around it saying "DANGER EXPLOSIVE HAZARD DO NOT TOUCH". Kind of scary, haha. I didn't explode though so that's good. I did take a nice long break and eat some ravioli with pesto, pepperoni and hot sauce though which was quite magical! I kept thinking the rain was gonna hit and hit hard. At 1:30pm I did put on my rain gear and the sky was super dark, but somehow the storm passed fairly quickly and the sky had some blue in it again. Near Tennessee Pass the sky got so dark and it drizzled a little, but amazingly that cleared up to. Then it was pretty nice for a bit, so I just kept on hiking. I had cell service for like an hour today and I thought "oh I'm sure I'll have it when I camp!" Nope, not a chance, haha. Oh well. I was looking forward to doing a few things but it's all good. I kept hiking and hiking and ended up doing 27 miles. Not bad. When I did finally call the rain and thunder finally came. Quite a lot of lightning which is definitely unnerving. I suppose it'll be quick though, being alone and getting struck by lightning, so many I should worry less about it. Certainly instinct to be freaked out by big thunderstorms though. The storm finally passed but now it's 8:10pm and the rain has started again. Camped at 10,800 feet. I wonder if there will be any snow up higher tomorrow???