May 20, 2018
On the way up to Wild Horse Ridge we really started to feel the elevation and questioned our earlier idea to summit Bowman. We pushed up through the burn area which had its own beauty among all the destruction. The trail its self had some dead fall but was in surprisingly good shape despite all the damage done to the area.
We struggled with the last hour or so as our legs were getting tired. From Bowman we saw a nice alpine ridge we had planned to camp up but settled on the first flat ground we saw which was just as we attained the ridge. This would be camp for the next two days. It was only a few hours before sunset so we built camp and a kitchen a fair distance away from camp down wind. When we first established our kitchen it was close to snow and we had to cross lots of it to reach camp but as the weekend went by the melt was obvious and exposed much more of the ridge making clean snow harder and harder to find, floaties in the water became a part of trip but luckily we boiled everything.
I was amazed by the amount and variety of animal scat on the ground no matter where you were you must filter or boil your water here. We found bear, cat, dear, goat scat and a few others I didn't recognize.
The next morning we were able to lounge in our tents because on the rain but it was over by 7am or so. We had a nice casual breakfast with blueberry pancakes and then went North the to high point of Wild Horse Ridge and the three high points to the north and back to camp for lunch.
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