Date: 2012-04-25
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Miles today: 17.2

This morning we went back to the Cowboy Diner for breakfast with Muck, Blue Fox and Juice and filled up on pancakes again. We then went to the Sundog Outfitters and looked around a little more and then headed back to the hostel. Big Sky, Slim and I started talking about slack packing and decided to try and get a shuttle up the road where the trail crosses and then hike back southbound to town. There was a phone number for 'Wolf' on the pin board at the hostel and he gives shuttles to hikers so I called him and set up a shuttle for us. We decided not to take any packs at all so we just filled our pockets with snacks and other essential gear and headed up the road. Wolf dropped us of at the road crossing at around 11:00am and we were on our way back to town. It felt weird hiking without packs on and we were a little off balance for the first few miles without all the weight on our backs. We soon were running into thru hikers that we saw leaving town yesterday going northbound and they were suprised to see us going the other direction. We arrived at Lost Mountain Shelter and found that Medicine Man was still there from last night so we talked for awhile and planned to meet up on the trail tomorrow. We continued south after a little break and ran into Runner so we stopped and chatted with him for awhile too. He also got a new pack in town and was loving it; it is the same as the one we got so Big Sky and I were happy to hear that the pack was working out for him. We planned on meeting up with him also and continued on. The trail today was mostly down hill heading into town so if we had left town northbound like we had originally planned it would have been up hill all day. So with the trail being down hill and with us hiking with no packs we were making really good time and soon arived at the next shelter but decided to skip it and keep going.   Not far after the shelter we ran into Craftsman and two other hikers I did not recognize so once again we talked to them for a bit and headed on. We figured by that point that we had run into all the thru hikers going northbound because it was a little after 3:00pm and most of the other hikers in town were not heading out today but about two miles out of town we ran into Turtle, Steamroller and Craftsman (a different Crafsman) so once again we chatted with them too before we went our separate ways. We finished the last two miles of the trail back into town and headed back to the hostel to get out of our boots and hiking cloths. By that time, found that there were a few new hikers at the hostel. We were pretty tired from the fast pace today and so we just relaxed for the rest of the day. My new boots worked good today with only one hot spot on my left heal and my knee did not hurt today even though I did not wear my knee brace. Tomorrow will be the true test on my knee when I have my pack on but I hope the new boots will fix my knee problems. Tomorrow we have to go to the post office to mail some gear home and forward my summer gear on ahead then we will get a ride back up the the same road crossing we started at today and once again head north. Its 10:00pm and its time for bed...night all.