8/12/21
Daily Miles: 17
2021 CDT Total Miles: 299
Overall CDT Total Miles: 2372
As Mace would say, “it was a glorious day.” Definitely one of our favorite days on this trip so far.
The wind died down sometime overnight and it felt a little eerie when we woke up to a silent forest. Our little slice of green forest amongst the burned was a really nice campsite.
As soon as we left our camp, we were back in the middle of a burned out forest. We had several miles down to a state highway where we would find our only water source of the day. It was about a third of a mile off trail, but it was a nice clear and cold water source.
Once we left the highway, we started a big climb up to the ridge line. Just like the last few days, the climbing was pretty aggressive. It looked like there had been some major cutting back of fallen trees along the trail in the last year. Surely it was a big job for the crew that had come to clean up the trail.
Once we got up onto the ridge, we had about five miles along the mostly treeless ridge. This is our favorite kind of walking, as we had amazing views all around us. There was a slight breeze to keep us cool, but we could also enjoy the sounds of the birds and insects. It was really a perfect day of walking.
We tried to keep on schedule today, because a friend of Mace’s, Dave, was going to be picking us up at Rogers Pass. We were really grateful knowing that we would be taken care of once we got to the pass.
Our final few miles were a big descent down to the pass. We stopped to pick a few huckleberries and thimbleberries along the way. It was also a chance to give our knees a moment of rest from the long downhill.
We made it to the pass just before 3:00pm and then Dave drove us into Lincoln where we had motel rooms reserved. He even let us use his car to drive around town for our resupply.
It feels good to be clean, well-fed and just resting for the evening. We’ll head back out to the trail tomorrow morning for our shortest stretch of the trip…just three days to Augusta.
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