July 31, 2015
Star Lake to Round Lake
16.6 miles
66.3 total for Mike (69.3 for Greg)

We started by crossing the outlet from Star Lake.  Here's a pic of this beautiful lake.

From there we had a very difficult climb up over the shoulder of Freel Peak.  I have to stop, bend over and gasp more often than I care to admit.  Greg seems to do this without effort.  He graciously suggested it was because he was 5 years younger.  I suggested it was because I weighed 30 lbs more then he does.  When he still thought it was the age difference I suggested we test our theories: he would carry 15 lbs of my stuff to even out our weight difference and we see how we do.  He declined.  Rats!

After Freel it was a lot of downhill.  Going downhill is a different pain then uphill.  It jars knees and feet and todau it caught ip with both of us in an ugly way.  Greg always walked behind me so I didn't how badly he was limping as the day wore on.  He could only bend his knee about 10%.  So he basically had to keep it straight on all his downhill steps.  He said he was "peglegging" most of the day and was in a lot of pain.  By the end of the day he was very concerned about being able to go on.

For me, I had been having some blister issues, but today exploded to completely ugly!  I had been using moleskin on smaller blisters but it did not help today on all the downhill.  More on that later.  

As we came around the SE corner of the lake we had some beautiful views. 

We also saw lots of incredible flowers, watered by snow melting from Freel Mt.  

As we neared the Big Meadow area, we came across the biggest tree we had ever seen!  Look at that giant!  There are trees fallen all over the place, in all stages of decay, but this one looked fairly recent. Greg's comment was sooooo Greg: "That's enough wood to heat my house for 5 years!"

We were going to camp at Big Meadow, but decided to go 2.6 miles more.  This was a good choice but it really slammed us: Greg's knee and my blisters!  

We finally, finally reached Round Lake for the night. Camped right on the beach.  We washed some clothes and body parts.  First wash time in four days!  I think everything was a bit cleaner.  Again a full moon which has made every night incredibly beautiful.