Date: 8/27/20
Daily Miles: 21
Total Miles: 1168
It turned out to be another warm night…definitely not cold like we expected. It did start sprinkling at 1:00am, so we had to hop out of our hammocks and get our tarps hung up. We should have had our tarps up already just to dry out from the rain the previous night. But in our exhaustion last evening, we forgot that our tarps were still wet. We didn’t end up getting much rain overnight so our tarps were dry this morning.
We felt like we were just moving like slow pokes this morning. It took us almost three hours to go our first four miles, and the trail was quite easy. Once we realized our slow pace, we tried to be more conscious of going a bit faster.
At lunchtime, we got to a trailhead and then saw two northbound hikers, Chop Chop and Not So Fast, coming down the trail. We had met them back in the West Collegiate Mountains in Colorado. It was really nice to see them again and to hear how their hike was going. It was quite warm and so we found a bit of shade to sit in while eating lunch and chatting.
While we were talking, another couple hiking the CDT, Happy Dance and All In, offered some drinks and snacks. They are hiking the trail in a unique way…they have two cars which they position at the ends of sections and then they hike from one car to the next. So, they had parked one car up at the Green River and were heading north on the trail up to their car.
The six of us ended up chatting for awhile and before we knew it, over an hour and a half had passed. It was really fun to have a bit of a social time on the trail. The number of other CDT hikers we have met has been really small, so we enjoy the few social interactions we get.
The trail really changed after the trailhead (this also marked our departure from the Bridger Wilderness where we have been for the past six or so days). Instead of rocky trail, we were now walking on a sandy trail. The landscape changed from rocky peaks to flat-ish meadows and forests. It was pretty obvious that we are heading out of the mountains. It will be at least a week and a half before we expect to be back in the mountains again.
It was quite hot today. We dipped our bandanas into the creeks to cool them off before putting them on our heads to cool us off. We did this as often as we could, since the sun felt quite intense. We have seen a weather forecast which predicts cooler temperatures coming, which we are looking forward to.
We decided to hike a few extra miles today in order to shorten our walk into town tomorrow. In fact, we will go to two towns tomorrow…first, we’ll stop at South Pass City to mail ahead all of our hammock gear. Then we will continue to Atlantic City where we will pick up our resupply and all of our tent gear. While we’re not looking forward to sleeping on the ground, we know it is just temporary…hopefully just ten nights.
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