CDT Day 83 – Harris Bear Spring

Date: 9/18/20

Daily Miles: 23

Total Miles: 1517

As expected, last night was really cold. Beardoh stayed warm and slept well, but SweetPea’s feet got cold during the night and she had a hard time sleeping. As we packed up in the dark, it was the usual situation of our fingers getting so cold that they hurt.

Again we started off in all our layers, trying to warm up our feet and hands. Beardoh has been starting most days lately without poles, just so he can keep his hands fisted up in his mittens to warm them quicker.

A lot of the trail this morning has been hijacked by the cows which graze in the area. Because they walk on the trail, and because it was muddy very recently, they have done a real number on it. The trail is now hardened into an ankle-twisting mess. It is really annoying to walk on…especially for multiple miles.

This morning, we came to a very small creek that was going to be our last water for 12 miles. As we were scooping the water into our bottles (it was pretty shallow), we could hear a cow a little ways off making a ton of weird noises. Soon the cow was coming down the trail towards us acting very strange. Once we realized it was a bull, we figured it was signaling us to get out of there before he got even more pissed off, so we grabbed our bottles and got ourselves out of his eye sight. Bulls always make us a bit nervous, so we like to give them as much space as possible.

It seemed like there must have recently been some trail construction in the area where we were hiking today, since our navigation app often didn’t match the marked trail in front of us. It also seemed like there was more trail geared to mountain bikers with the long, wide and frequent turns.

For most of the day we were largely going downhill. As we dropped in elevation, we started to see some different trees. By the end of the day, we were in Jeffrey pines, oaks and junipers. It was also quite hazy today. We figure that there is smoke from the wildfires in Colorado coming down here…we aren’t aware of any fires close by.

We are camped about 3,000 feet lower than last night, so we are hopeful it won’t be as cold tonight. Regardless, SweetPea is going to be looking for some “feet warmer” packets at the store tomorrow so she can be prepared for the next super cold night.