Today was my shortest day. It was about 4 miles of easy trail. Before leaving camp, I managed to get my line tangled up on top of the bear pole. The bear pole consists of two pipes stuck in the ground that go up to probably about fifteen feet where another pipe goes across connecting them. There are bolts stuck in each of the three pieces of pipe so that people's rope will catch and can be tied on after their bag of food stuff (and anything else that might attract a bear) has been hoisted to near the top of the pole. After letting my bag down, I thought it would be easier to throw my loose end of the line over the pole rather than just pulling it over (it was a rather long chunk of line) or untying the bag end and pulling that short bit over. So I balled up the loose end to make it easier to throw over and it got caught on one of the bolts and got twisted around. I ate breakfast while pondering how to get the line down and after a while some people with trekking poles came along. I borrowed one and using a chair to stand on was able to barely reach the tangle. I got it a little untangled but was still having trouble. Eventually the guy who I borrowed the pole from came over to help and after duct-taping another pole to the end of the first one we managed to finally get it all untangled. I learned my lesson and after that avoided having such problems.
Since the day was such a short one, I started a bit late and stopped at the Canyon City ruins, not too far from the campground. There was a nice little suspension bridge to cross and then a little trail past some remnants of the old town. There were a couple of trails that were not the main trail, but seemed in reasonable condition, so I followed them. They contributed greatly to my having very wet shoes and socks that day as there was quite a bit of tall wet grass growing around them. Unfortunately, they didn't appear to lead anywhere, so I turned back. On the main trail the main attraction was a part of what used to be a tramway going up the trail.
It took me about an hour and a half to get to Pleasant camp. There was a bit of hill on this section, though it wasn't too bad. It was once again raining a little the whole way. According to how I read the maps, Pleasant camp is about halfway (two miles) between Canyon City Camp and Sheep Camp. This does not seem correct though, since as I said it took me an hour and a half to get there, and it only took me about half an hour to get from Pleasant Camp to Sheep Camp. The trail was much flatter on that second portion, but I don't think that it would have made that much of a difference in time.
There were a couple of warming shelters in Sheep Camp. I thought that it seemed a bit strange to have more there than they had at any of the previous camps, but it turned out to be rather a good idea. Both of the warming shelters were pretty crowded with people drying their stuff off and eating. At around 7:45 a ranger stationed nearby on the trail came by and told us a little about trail conditions coming up as well as some of the local history and a stirring recital of The Cremation of Sam McGee.
I recognized several of the people at this camp from Canyon City the previous day. The group with the guy who helped my get my line off the bear pole also stayed at Sheep Camp that night. I spent a fair bit of time around a lot of these people, as our scheduled campgrounds often coincided. I think that interacting with these people was almost as fun as hiking the trail was.