Day 6: Copper and Elkhorn Creeks: 9 miles

We got up and packed camp again and headed up the Copper Creek trail. Shortly up the trail we found a nice campsite and while deciding whether to use it a father and two sons came by. They had spent the night before at the campsite and talked with us while we set up camp. They had left in place beds from pine boughs they had made (illegally!) for their tents and thought we were both a strange for not using them. They headed on down the trail and we headed up.

This part of the wilderness was very nice even if not quite as scenic as the Lakes Basin. It consisted of following Copper and the Elkhorn Creek. There would be periodic short rocky climbs in between meadows. Eventually we came to the highest part of the trail where we had the option of hiking down to Swamp Lake. It looked interesting, but neither of us was thrilled with the idea of hiking back up. So we headed down a little way on a different trail just until we could get a good view of the Minam river drainage.

Then it was back down the way we came to our campsite where we had cold showers as I had choosen a poor location for the water bladders.

We decided to play a game of scrabble and it quickly started getting really cold. We put on all our clothes and were still cold. We decided we had to either build a fire or go to bed and we choose the latter.

This was my coldest night ever backpacking. It got down to around freezing. For the first time ever I cinched up my sleeping bag over my face. I was then able to stay warm. Karen would later dub the campsite Camp Witchitit, which I understand is Nez Perce for really cold.