8/14/21
Daily Miles: 19
2021 CDT Total Miles: 336
Overall CDT Total Miles: 2409
It was a nice temperature overnight and we all slept good. Just a quarter mile down the trail the temperature was much colder. As we went to find our water source, we were all so cold. It was surprising the difference.
After getting our water, we started a climb. Within 100 yards, we passed through a very noticeable temperature level. It was so much warmer from one step to the next. At that same time, we could smell smoke. As we looked across the valley, it was obvious that the smoke had blown in overnight.
We climbed up out of the valley and had a few more ridge climbs to do before embarking on a very long descent. While the grade was mostly quite good, the descent was so long that it got very tiring. We came down into a think forest with really large lodgepole pines. With the smokey sky today, our views were pretty limited. We could see the next ridge over, but not much beyond that.
We stopped at the bottom of the valley near a stream to do laundry and to have lunch. It felt nice today to feel like we could take more breaks and linger more than we could yesterday. Our bodies felt pretty refreshed today, but we felt like we were running a bit low on energy.
The rest of the afternoon was spent walking up the bottom of a river valley. We kept looking down at the river expecting to see a bear, because it looked like the ideal place for bears to hang out.
We made our miles by 5pm and decided to set up camp in a nice healthy patch of forest. We knew that the terrain coming up was going to be mostly burned forest so we didn’t see the need to keep going.
It is nice to get into camp early today so that we can have time just chatting and relaxing.
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