Daily Miles: 16
Total Miles: 105
It got quite cold overnight, but we still slept good. It can be hard to fall asleep early around here since it stays light until at least 10pm. We had put up our tarps last night, but it never rained and we woke up to clear skies again.
We all started with extra layers of clothes on since it was so cold. Luckily we had a hearty climb right away that helped to warm us up. We still kept an extra layer on for several hours until the sun finally fell on us.
We had a lot of long gradual ups and long gradual downs today. We continued to walk on ATV roads today, but luckily we saw no ATVs (or anyone for that matter) and had the trail to ourselves. At times the road could be really rocky, other times it had puddles which spanned across the whole road, and other times the road was nice and smooth.
The temperature never got really hot today and stayed at a comfortable spot…probably in the 70’s. With the blue skies, it just felt the perfect day to be out hiking.
The scenery continues to be really nice. We enjoy walking through the dense forests, but also marvel at the dramatic views as we hiked through North Fork Pass with tall rocky mountains surrounding us.
We knew we had a detour this afternoon to avoid a part of the trail which has some avalanche debris making it dangerous to cross. The detour ended up coming much sooner than we had expected. In fact, it came before our planned-for water source, so Beardoh offered to hike back about 3/4 mile to the last creek and get us all some water. So sweet!
Once we had our water, we started in on the detour, which had been marked with orange flagging. It started out on an ATV road and then veered off to just a long bushwhack. The way is flagged quite well, but it is still slow going and we started to wonder how long it was going to take us to get through the detour (which eventually pops you back out on the trail at a saddle) and then down to a campable spot. We came upon a pretty nice spot for camping while on the detour and decided to stop. Even though it was only 4pm, we figured it made more sense to stop there and finish up the detour tomorrow morning.
There is a lot of moose poop around our camp, so we are hoping for a visit from a moose tonight.
We managed to find a tree near camp to hang our food. We’re going to have to find more durable bags for hanging when we get to Banff, because our grocery bags are strained under the weight of five days of food, plus all of our scented things.
It is already feeling pretty chilly at 6pm, so it will most likely be a very cold night.
Oh, and we saw our first GDT sign today on the trail! Very exciting!
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