Date: 6/22/20
Daily Miles: 24
Total Miles: 175
We woke up to beautiful blue skies this morning. We left camp just after 6:00am, and it was quite cold since our cluster of trees was right next to a meadow. But, we had a climb right away, so we warmed up quick enough.
Our morning climb up to the high point for the day wasn’t too bad. We saw a marmot near the top and even saw a large herd of elk once we got up and out of the trees. The weather was perfect, with bright blue skies and completely calm wind.
A lot of the morning walking was on rolling hills above tree line. There often wasn’t any trail, and the terrain was the type of grass clumps where you constantly feel on the brink of twisting your ankle.
Shortly after our morning laundry stop, we got onto a jeep track and ended up on that same track for the rest of the day. Lots of steep ups and downs…it seems that a steep grade is very acceptable for off-road vehicles, but for walking it can be exhausting and slippery with gravel.
While we were walking this morning, we could hear a fighter jet overhead. We looked up, even though history tells us the jet is gone before we even hear it. But this time, we got a good look at it and were amazed how low it was flying. As we stood there remarking on the plane, another one came by that was really close and also very low to the ground. We’d never had a jet come quite so close to us, but is was pretty cool.
We stopped for lunch at Morrison Lake which was really scenic. We saw across the lake that there were people camped with a truck and several four wheelers. It seemed like a peaceful and perfect spot to camp for awhile. We’ve seen many spots on our hikes where we think it would be great to come back and car camp sometime.
The afternoon turned into a seemingly unending series of steep ups and downs of the jeep track. We found a bit of shade around 5pm for dinner and then walked our final 3.5 miles by 7pm. We are camped in a really great spot near a spring…lots of good hangs in the trees.
Tomorrow we have a big climb in the morning to our highest point of the trail so far. It will also be a short day, as we are headed into Leadore, ID to resupply.
What?! Correct social distancing but no masks?! (Last pic of the streamside laundry)
Heh … just kidding. 🙂 I’m really enjoying your TRs and I’m beginning to think your late-start solution of rearranging the CDT into a flip-flop might just be the smartest way to do it even when there are no unforeseen circumstances. Looking forward to more great posts and beautiful pics.
Ha! We’ll see how our plan works out in the end. The snow in MT is melting much slower than expected.