CDT Day 2 – Lillian Lake

Date: 6/13/20

Daily Miles: 20

Total Miles: 40

The trail took pity on us today. While the trail was easier today, the best part was that it was totally snow free! Yeah! What a difference that made in the enjoyment of the day!

We left camp around 6:30am after a very warm night of sleep. It has probably been years since we have had such a warm night of camping. We had really expected cold nights, so it was a real surprise.

The first few hours of the day were spent making our way down to a big road. We walked above multiple houses sitting on large tracts of land…it felt like we were headed to the plains.

Once we crossed the road, we spent the next five or so hours walking along old jeep roads. It was nice in that it was mellow walking for the most part. It was quite windy today and at times it felt like the wind was going to knock us over.

We ate lunch hiding behind some sage bushes to get out of the wind. When we left the protection of the lunch spot, we all put on a wind shirt since the wind was chilly.

We finally made it back to regular trail and had an afternoon of fairly mild ups and downs. We had to do three river crossings over the afternoon. The water was frigid and it felt like as soon as our shoes were starting to dry out, we would have to ford another creek. After having wet and cold shoes all day yesterday, it had been nice having dry shoes for most of the day.

We stopped around 4:30pm to cook dinner on the side the trail. It is nice to have that longer break with hot food when we know we have only a few miles left to walk for the day. We definitely feel re-energized for the home stretch.

We made it to camp around 6:45pm, which feels so much better than our late finish yesterday. It is good to feel like we can settle into camp a bit slower and know we will still have plenty of hours for sleeping.

SweetPea was really struggling today still with the elevation. Whenever we went uphill, she would feel nauseous and energy-less. She had to loosen her hip belt to help ease the sick feeling, which meant that she was carrying all the weight of her pack just on her shoulders all day, which doesn’t feel good. Her struggles definitely made for a slow pace again today, but hopefully her body will adjust to the elevation soon.