On the second day of the trip I moved camp from the drainage on the west side of Demaray Point to the spring along the lower portion of the Brahma-Deva route.

02:45 pm - At base camp

I am at my camp next to the spring and luckily there is water here. I was worried about that all the way over and trying to come up with a Plan "C" in the event that there was none. Plan "B" was to setup camp here and then go back down to Clear Creek to get water and return. Once I started on the route coming over here from the Clear Creek Trail that Plan "B" was not looking so good. It is a brutal route and I had no desire whatsoever to go down to Clear Creek and return with an additional 12 pounds of water and to have to do that again on Wednesday. Happily now I don't have to.

I got a late start out of camp this morning because I was in no great hurry. I got up at 6:30 and had my breakfast of bagel with peanut butter and blueberry preserves. After I finished breakfast I packed up camp and was on the trail by a little after 8:00. I slept ok last night but not as well as I had hoped I would. I tossed and turn a lot and woke often. I don't feel tired though so I must have gotten enough sleep.

The Moon was gorgeous and the Canyon lit up beautifully beneath it last night. Once I got into my sleeping bag I wasn't getting out for anything though so I didn't even attempt any photos. I tried to read a little before going to sleep and could not even make it through on chapter. I may give that another try before dinner tonight.

So anyway... I left camp around 8:10 and rounded Demaray Point about 8:50. From there the trail just seemed to drag on forever. I stopped for one rest of about 15 minutes and arrived at the Clear Creek overlook at 10:50. I started the climb up to the saddle at 11:00 and was on top of that at 11:15. From that point on though things started looking bad. Nothing about the route coming over here looked familiar from last time and it is very doubtful that I used the same route. I was following some-one or some-thing's route at times but they were quite likely mostly just game trails. I tried to stay high as much as possible to avoid the side drainages. I may have been too high but I didn't see anything better below me. I finally made it down to the creek bed at 12:45 and then up to camp here at 1:20.

Camp is all setup and all of my water containers are completely full. The Sun has already fallen behind the cliffs to the west of me and the wind is starting to pick up and cool things off. The weather has been awesome so far and hopefully that trend will continue. Today seemed a little warmer than yesterday but with the Sun gone now I may need to put on my sweatshirt. It is going to be very nice to just relax here for the remainder of the day and buid up my energy for tomorrow.

Hopefully I can make it to the top of Deva Temple from here, I sure have a much better starting point than last time. It is no wonder that I didn't make it last time after getting beat up by the route just to get this far.

There are no good campsites here at all and finding a place to pitch the tent was a real challenge. There was one sort of good spot right next to the spring but I didn't think that was a good idea as it would have blocked access to the spring for any animals that might want to use it. There was quite a bit of activity around the spring when I first arrived here but all of he birds, dragonflies and other insects disappeared with the Sun. I did see some frogs so hopefully there will be live entertainment this evening. Last night was very quiet.