August 27th
Segment 17
We slept warm and dry in our wet tents last night. Apparently it had rained again but it had stopped some time in the night and our tents were not as wet as they were the morning before. We were camped above 11,000 ft and it was chilly. I could see stars in the sky and the clouds were clearing when I got up. It was looking up to be a beautiful day!
Jodie, Triple Check triple checked our camp in the dark with her headlight before we left.
We walked in the gray, dim light of predawn and the sun rose behind us.
Turns out our next water source is in 3 mi but we carried enough water to be able to skip it and make it to the 7-mile mark where there is a stream. Baldy Lake is reportedly a bit swampy. Good thing we worry about not having enough water! We skipped that too. We saw Misty for the third time in the last 3 days this morning and new she would pass us up and we probably wouldn’t see her again. We were posing to take a selfie when I said wait how’s my hair they both turned and looked at me and there was a pause and silence and shocked looks on their faces and they both quietly said ‘not good’…OMG! I look like a wild old mountain woman!! I did my best to finger comb the hair behind my ears and smiled!
We came upon a fox in the trail that noticed us but wouldn’t run away from the food they had caught. So we watched them for a minute until they gathered their meal and took off.
There hadn’t been any water since our dinner at the cattle trough yesterday when we came upon a creek that was supposed to have a decent trickle. The creek was a dirty rust brown. Jodie happened to have carried an extra liter of water and gave it to me. Did I mention she’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met? So grateful to have such a great friend!
We saw maybe more moose poop, old and new. We walked through raspberry patches, saw bear poop with lots of raspberries in it. So I decided that made it safe to try the wild raspberries. They were tart and bitter but still tasted like raspberries.
We crossed the 300 mile marker today!!! Hikers before us created a mile marker. We had our we had our little celebratory photo session and moved on.
We summited our last big mountain for the day. We had slept above 11,000 feet for the last two nights and Jodie’s acute mountain sickness symptoms have been creeping and sneaking back in and it suddenly crashed down on us on the last summit of this section. We have gone through everything in our backpacks. Tylenol, Motrin, Zofran, phenylephrine and caffeine. All we had left was a bottle of water and a chocolate bar to help her symptoms; severe headache, nausea and fatigue. So we sat in silence, rested and shared a chocolate bar. When the headache subsided enough we moved on and headed down hill.
After 22 miles without a decent water source we came upon a creek close to highway 114. We filtered and drank water thirstily. We met a girl from Alaska hiking the CT by herself. Sleeping only in a bivy bag. Very brave! We sat and discussed Jodie’s Acute Mountain Sickness symptoms that are returning and decided we had to stay in town for the night and visit the clinic again tomorrow for some medical advice. Coming up we have two easy days throughout cow country and then we head into the most desolate and highest elevations of the trail with long and complicated escape routes and that had me really worried. Jodie was crushed and devastated and determined to cross the finish line. My mind started wondering to being home and with my husband. I’m proud of what we did and we will continue on if it is safe to do so. We got a great hitch all the way into town with a nice man named John. We chatted about kids and life and adventures.We checked in for a night at a Gunnison hostel, The Wanderlust. There were a handful of adventurous travelers there and we met a few other CT hikers. We got a nice bunk in the bunk room with showers and laundry!
Jodie’s blog: bikehikerepeat.com
