CDT Part 2 – Day 24 – Elbow Creek

8/20/21

Daily Miles: 20

2021 CDT Total Miles: 428

Overall CDT Total Miles: 2501

It rained off and on overnight, but it stayed pretty warm. Our gear is feeling quite damp after several nights of moist air. Hopefully we’ll have a dry night soon.

While we had dry socks to put into dry shoes this morning, they were pretty soaked within five minutes of walking…it felt like we had already forded a stream, but in fact it was just the wet plants along the trail getting our feet wet.

The sky was grey in the morning and we all started out with our rain gear. Even though it wasn’t raining, it kept our legs dry and kept us pretty warm since it was chilly. We ended up keeping our rain pants on all day.

Beardoh saw his second bear of the trip shortly after leaving camp. It was walking below the trail in a burned area. Mace was able to get a view of it before it ran behind some trees.

We just had a little over a mile left of the Spotted Bear Alternate this morning before we reconnected back with the regular CDT. A lot of the walking today was through burned forest, with patches of healthy forest occasionally. The trail was mostly flat during the day, which made for a relaxed pace.

During the morning we started to see wolf prints on the trail…they were really big! We had met a group of hikers the other day who had seen a wolf on the trail the day before. It would be really cool to see a wolf out here in the woods.

SweetPea somehow managed to pull a muscle or tendon on the top of her foot near the ankle. Most likely it happened during one of the multiple times she tripped on a root in the trail. It was quite painful for the rest of the day. She tried to walk carefully to avoid tripping again and injuring it further, but it is hard to avoid tripping on these trails. Hopefully it will feel better soon.

We started to get glimpses of blue sky in the afternoon. They were often short lived, but it gave us hope that the weather might improve soon.

We got to camp just after 5:30pm at a really nice campsite near a creek. We were all able to have a good spot to set up our shelters…not something we can count on each night.

Two northbound CDT hikers stopped by when we were already in our hammocks at the late hour of 7pm. We chatted with them for a few minutes, and then they continued on. Folks hiking northbound who are at this point already are definitely hiking big miles everyday, so we weren’t surprised that they wouldn’t consider camping at 7pm…we figure they hike until dark most nights.