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Longmire to Devil's Dream 1008 PDT 7/15/01 Slept in until ~9 am. Got packed quickly and made breakfast. Our backcountry site is excellent. Overcast, probably low 60's. Both of us feel great. A nice hot breakfast, and we're ready for the trail. Should have brought metal plate for the bottom of the stove. Improvised fix, but the plate would have been better. The "plate" for the bottom of the stove is the Trillium™ Stove Base, which attaches to the bottom of the WhisperLite™ Shakerjet Stove that we carried. The stove base is a bit heavy, but I should have brought it along on this trip to improve the performance of the stove a bit, and to protect the ground on which the stove was placed while it was operating. 1116 PDT 7/15/01 Stopped off at Building L302 in the old Longmire campground to wash up. It looks like we might have rain today, and there will be a fair amount of wind. Our rain gear is handy, so we should be okay. This was the last time we would have "running water" until we arrived at Sunrise. This was a nice opportunity to wash up before hitting the trail. 1327 PDT 7/15/01 Sunday Stopped just past the top of the ridge. It's been nice weather -- just warm enough to be comfortable. Lorraine put on moleskin to replace the moleskin she put on this morning. We ran into Dan Vaughan again this morning at the Longmire Visitor's Center. He told us to stop by on our way back to report on our trip. The sleep we got last night was a huge help. We made somewhat less than 2 mph for the uphill climb out of Longmire. Trail conditions are good. We've seen a number of day hikers today, and two young men going the same direction we are. 1955, 7/15/01 Arrived at Devil's Dream at 1700. There were already a lot of folks in camp. The camp is nice -- the creek is beautiful. It began to rain just before we arrived. We put up the tent quickly, and walked down to pump water. Had a bit of a problem with the pump -- I'll try to fix it in the morning. Had a great meal. The campsite is very quiet now. We hear jet noise every once in a while. Rain gear works great. Lorraine's pack cover leaks. All of her stuff is double-bagged, though, so she's in great shape. The problem with the pump and the pack cover would remain with us the entire trip. The pump behaved erratically -- on the times we needed it most, we could usually coax it into operating. Very frustrating. The pack cover was more problematic -- it turned out that it worked better when used inside-out, but still wasn't good enough to keep everything dry reliably. The critical item in Lorraine's pack that wasn't double-bagged was her sleeping bag. More on that, later....
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