CDT Day 53 – Heart Lake

Date: 8/13/20

Daily Miles: 22

Total Miles: 935

We were up and walking by 6:30am this morning, even though we were aching to sleep in after yesterday’s marathon day. The trail continued to be very quiet today, only seeing a few people.

The trail was mostly very easy, although super dusty today. It felt quite chilly this morning, and we both hiked with our wind shirts, wind pants and mittens for the first few hours.

We had camped near Shoshone Lake last night, and it seemed like most of this morning was spent hiking around the very large lake, even if we didn’t often see it. At one point, we had to cross the outflow of the lake, with water over SweetPea’s knees. It was nice to take a quick break, though and enjoy the beautiful view.

When we stopped for laundry in a stream this morning, it was pretty amazing just how much mud was in our socks from the bog last night. We can’t remember the last time our socks were so dirty. Our feet were wet a lot of the day today, but mostly with just clear water from the streams and lakes outflows that we had to ford.

We met another northbound CDT hiker, Bam, today. Turns out we had actually seen him in Grand Lake, CO, but we hadn’t gotten the chance to talk with him. There aren’t many male hikers who wear a skirt, so it was easy to remember him.

We ran into a ranger this afternoon who checked our camping permit. He was very friendly, but we have heard stories of the backcountry rangers giving CDT hikers a hard time. Luckily, the ranger we talked to was very nice and pleasant.

Our assigned campsite tonight is almost half a mile off trail, right on the shore of Heart Lake. The wind is incredibly strong, so we walked away from the shore a bit to get some protection from the wind. Hopefully it will die down soon. We are the only ones camped here so far.