The next morning we got up and made a nice breakfast. Andy was busy trying to weld his junk for an hour with Richard's welder whe he discovered it wasn't even turned on! Too funny. A few other repairs were made before all of the group but my Dad and I headed up to run the Little Sluice and meet up with a few people at Spider Lake. We decided to stay in camp and do some hiking. I also needed to get my tire sealed. In the process of fooling with the ARB compressor to air the tire up I blew out the o-ring that sels the compressor tank...excellent. Tried a quick fix with duct tape and zip ties but it still wasn't holding pressure. So no lockers the rest of the trip. Yeah, fun! At least I got the tire sealed finally. Lots of plugs.
Dad and I took a great hike out around the lake to the big waterfall at the head. Tons and tons of water coming down from the snow melt. I was fascinated by all the wildflowers growing in little patches of soil up on the granite cliffs and spent a good part of the day taking pictures. We also hiked around to the spillway at the other end of Buck just to see what was happening over there. Lots of people fishing. Great, great weather. I also got in the lake for about 25 seconds to clean up. That water was MY-GOD-COLD! but so very refreshing!
Later in the afternoon a few people cam back. They turned around and decided they didn't want to go all the way to Spider. I figured the rest of the group wouldn't get back until late, and I think they barely made it into camp before dark. Some good stories of body damage to go around. I was glad to have taken the hike instead since I knew we were heading that direction the next day anyway. Another great round of sordid campfire stories and drunken banter. Moments like that are what Jeeping is all about!