Today started out great. Bit of a long stretch between water, but the spring at Big Crow Basin was fantastically clear and cold. Had lunch there - our first soup lunch day! Mmmmmmmmmmm. Potato soup! It was soooo good. Scout pass was the high point of the day, shortly after, up at 6530', but it wasn't too bad. However, we quickly ran into more problems. The trail between Bullion Pass and Blue Bell Pass was a nightmare. It turned from hiking over snow to climbing over snow. We had to traverse 45degree snow slopes - in our tennis shoes and trekking poles! Lots of slow and ponderous step kicking ensued
to guarantee our safe travel, but made it excruciatingly slow. 45 degree snow slopes are no joke, especially when you've got a bad runout. It reminded me more of spring mountaineering trips than summer hiking! We managed to perservere to the trail junction just south of Crown Point, only to see that the trial only got worse after that. So it was with heavy hearts that we opted to hike 
down tomorrow to Hwy 410 and hitchhike to the nearest phone. Looks like we're going to have to skip Washington and start in Oregon.
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