Chance woke me up at 5:45am as he was trying to get up and beat the bugs out of camp. He somewhat succeeded, I totally failed but still was hiking before the sun was up. I got some great pictures as I entered a giant bowl and traversed all the way around it. The rest of the morning was a series of climbs but not too high. Because we started so early, I stopped for lunch at 10:30am, and actually threw up my tent to avoid the bugs (which didn’t turn out to be terrible, but I didn’t want to deal with them). We took a long lunch, knowing that Hailey wasn’t meeting us until later in the evening.
After lunch, we had one big climb up to 9400 feet that turned out to be mostly on snow up and then just steeply down (the worst combo because you can’t glissade!). We were threading between big mountains, well over 10,000 feet, so lots of good views all around. Once we made that last climb, it was a big long grind down on an old Forest Service road that was really poorly maintained. Eventually we went off the CDT for another few miles to a campground where we were to meet Hailey. We got there and settled down to wait, but she showed up really quickly – apparently she sped a little to get to us 🙂
We packed up fast and hit the road to get somewhere and eat! Hailey had brought us cokes and homemade cookies from my parents (mmm). We got to Dillon (a town of 3,000) and plan to use it for our homebase over the weekend. Seems pretty good as we are surrounded by restaurants and beside a grocery store.
Daily Summary
Date: July 29, 2011
Day 35
Daily Distance: 21.5 miles
Trip Distance: 633.5 miles