CT – Day 22

Daily Miles: 7
Total Miles: 391

We decided to sleep in for an extra half hour this morning since we only had a short bit to hike.  The trail continued to follow Elk Creek down a narrow valley.  We saw several places where the trail had to be re-routed due to rock slides or mud slides.  That valley seemed like it would be a difficult place for trail building.

We finally got to the bottom of the descent which was at the same place as railroad tracks.  There is a scenic train which goes between Durango and Silverton.  Apparently the train goes three times a day, but it wasn’t coming through when we were there.

The final three miles for the day was all uphill.  We had heard it was a tough climb, but it was actually so well switchbacked, that it was probably the best climb of the trail.

We made it to Molas Lake by 11am, and were happy to see Ana and Ariel in the parking lot with the two section hikers we had met yesterday.  It was fun to hang out with them and to see that Ana and the section hikers were feeling better.  

Beardoh’s childhood friend, Bob, picked us up at noon and we headed to Silverton for lunch and to pick up our resupply package.  It was a lot of fun to hang out with Bob and to hear what he has been up to since high school.

Our resupply package was a different story.  We had sent it to a hostel in town (Blair Street Hostel), but when we went there to pick it up, the woman told us she had sent it back to the return address just this morning, since we were five days past the ETA we had written on our box.  We were speechless when we heard this, as we have never heard of any place being so tight with the ETA.  It really makes no sense.

So, we ended up driving to Durango to get to a grocery store for resupply.  The silver lining in all this is that the grocery store had Spam Singles, so we get to enjoy some new food for the final stretch!