Day 33

Day 33, 5/31/23

Watauga Lake to Iron Mountain Shelter

15 miles, mile 444.5

Today was relatively uneventful, we did see a bunny and a deer near the end of the day. I was pretty tired hiking and felt like I was moving slow. We do have a full resupply on our backs though. I certainly took a lot of sit down breaks, I tend to just plop in the middle of the trail whenever I feel tired. I checked far out for the iron mountain shelter that we are at and there was a long paragraph about a bear that was hanging around and wasn’t scared of him at all. The two guys who showed up here after us said they saw two bears about half a mile south of here. I have a feeling we will have visitors tonight. My food is hung in an impeccable PCT hang and everyone here knows about the bears and will hang theirs too. We have eight people total including myself here so I’m hoping there is safety in numbers. Everyone collected some sticks and we have a fire going for a bit. There is a challenge on the trail called the “Damascus Marathon” because this shelter is exactly 26.2 from Damascus. We are going to attempt it tomorrow, but I won’t be too sad if we aren’t successful. Especially if we have bears tonight and I don’t get the best sleep. That update will certainly come tomorrow though!

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