When I left Whitehall, Montana, it was really hot. Temps were back in the nineties. Shannon, the Whitehall trail angel, drove my pack to the end of the nine-mile road walk so I could slack pack. I was able to do another four miles or so, limping on the sore hip or groin muscle, before calling it a night.

The next day I fell at least five miles short of my goal. My hip/back/groin was hurting, it was again in the nineties, and the climbs were steep. I took a lot of breaks and tanked up on water whenever I could find it, which was seldom for one long stretch. Rather than pushing to reach my goal, at 7 p.m. that evening, I found a spot near a stream and called it a night.

I got a pretty early start the next morning, expecting to make up for lost miles. But once again I just didn’t have the push in me. There was a steep downhill and an exposed dirt-road walk. I stopped to eat a few times. I also stopped to use a cattle fence as a traction device to try to get what I suspected was my out-of-aligned sacrum back in place. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t find the push to go on. I was contemplating stopping for the night even though I had not yet gone five miles.

I had a really steep climb ahead, a total of 4,500 feet in about five miles to reach over 10,000 feet of elevation. The clouds were moving in, and even though my satellite device said zero chance of rain, I thought there could be a storm up on the ridge. I didn’t want to risk lightning on the exposed ridge. Just before leaving the dirt road, there was a lovely, flat, cleared spot near the river.

The sound of the river was lovely. I decided to take what hikers call a nearo. A “zero” is a day when no miles are hiked; a nearo is a step above that. (Some hikers call a thirteen-mile day a nearo!) I thought I was okay time-wise to reach my end goal before snow flies. As long as I put in some bigger miles in the next few days I wouldn’t run out of food before I hit the next town.

What sealed the deal was the outhouse by the road. If you have never been without a bathroom or an outhouse for a long time, you don’t know the luxury it brings. A slight rain started to fall, making me feel cozy in my tent and happy I had stopped. I had energy left to stretch my aching hip.