Long Distance Hiker

Thru Hiker's Blog and More

  • HOME
  • TRAIL JOURNALS
  • TRAIL PHOTOS
  • RESOURCES
    • Trip Planning & Debrief
    • Fitness, Food & Health
    • Gear
    • Community
    • Recommended Reading
    • Arizona Trail (AZT) – Resupply Plan
    • John Muir Trail Resupply Plan
    • Long Trail (LT) Planning Guide
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTACT
You are here: Home / Continental Divide Trail 2020 / CDT Day 16 – Altitude Woes

CDT Day 16 – Altitude Woes

July 3, 2020 by SweetPea

Date: 7/3/20

Daily Miles: 21

Total Miles: 288

Today was a rough day for SweetPea. She woke up in the morning with a mist of something sticky on her sleeping bag and the sides of her underquilt. Even though we were all sleeping under aspens (and presumably the sticky substance was from the trees), only SweetPea’s sleeping bag got sticky. Her bug netting is different than the other three and is more porous, so we figured that was why she got the worst of it. She just wiped things down with a wet wipe and hoped for the best.

The bulk of the morning was spent on a pretty reasonable uphill climb. We got right into the higher elevations and were soon at the highest elevation for this hike so far (over 11,500 feet). This elevation gain was pretty hard for SweetPea again. Instead of having heart burn, she just felt nauseous and completely lacking in energy. The uphills felt like torture as she crawled up at a snails pace with many breaks included. Not only was it torture for her, but certainly it wasn’t much fun for the other three to constantly be waiting for her. Hopefully things will improve soon.

There were some obvious differences we could tell between MT and CO after just one+ days of hiking in Colorado. First of all, Colorado is much drier. The dryness was apparent just looking at the soil…it was a lot harder than in MT. Also, the air just feels drier as well. Secondly, it is a lot hotter in CO. We have been used to temps in the 60s and 70s, but here the temps are more in the 80s. We definitely feel it when climbing in the afternoon. It is also taking some mental gymnastics to wrap our heads around the fact that we had been walking northbound and now we’re hiking southbound. It just seems to take a minute to orient ourselves now.

The scenery today was really nice…large mountains covered in trees with wide valleys. There were some very dark clouds that passed by in the late afternoon, but luckily we only got a few drops and even had a rainbow.

We got to camp around 6:45pm. There is a couple tenting in the area. We just asked them if it was ok for us to set up here and they said yes. They did warn us that they get up early – 4:20am! Yikes! We thought we got up early at 5:30am, but they get up really early! We’ll probably put in our ear plugs tonight so that hopefully we won’t hear too much of their packing up.

Filed Under: Continental Divide Trail 2020, Continental Divide Trail (CDT) 2020

« CDT Day 15 – Back on the Trail
CDT Day 17 – Parkview Lookout »

Comments

  1. Kathy Dudgeon says

    July 6, 2020 at 5:45 pm

    So gladSweetpea is feeling better and what a beautiful flower – looks fake!!

    Reply
    • Beardoh says

      July 7, 2020 at 8:53 am

      Thanks for the well wishes! We always marvel at the complexity of the Columbine flowers…truly a miracle of nature!

Questions or thoughts on this article? Please leave them below: Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Join our email list to be updated of our latest posts.

All Continental Divide Trail 2020 Posts

Our 2020, 2019 & 2018 Gear Lists, Hammock & Ground

Don’t Patreon Us, Donate to these guys instead

Special Thanks To:


Top Posts & Pages

  • Trail Journals
    Trail Journals
  • All Pacific Crest Trail 2016 Posts
    All Pacific Crest Trail 2016 Posts
  • The Grand Enchantment Trail (GET)
    The Grand Enchantment Trail (GET)

Thru Hiker Blog

Well over 13,000 miles of our thru hiking blogs, photos of our trips and resources can all be found on this site.  We hope that the pages herein can be of help and inspiration.

Like Us On Facebook

Long Distance Hiker

Click Here for RSS Feed

Follow us on Instagram

Affilate Disclosure

Some of the links within the pages Long Distance Hiker are affiliate links.  We are discontinuing the addition of affiliate links to new pages as of February 2019.

We encourage you to support the trail organizations that make hiking around the world a possibility.

Copyright © 2021 · longdistancehiker.com · Thanks for Visiting ·

Sign Up for our mailing list to get our newsletter with new posts.
This is typically emailed 1-3 times per month.

powered by MailChimp!

 

×