August 17
Segment 11
We had such a great time visiting with Bravestone. We are both super grateful for her generosity and hospitality. She is a natural care giver and gives to everyone around her, we were so blessed!
Our resupply boxes were so daunting that I didn’t even want to open mine until this morning. We are entering the Collegiate East trail in this segment. The East and West Collegiate trails are a circle of peaks named after universities. It’s such a long section that we decided to break up the food and stop halfway for another resupply. So we found another town we could get to with a post office and calculated our miles. We set up at the visitor center on a picnic table and sorted out our food and dried our tents from the rain last night. The visitor center became quite a busy buzz of activity as everyone was setting up for the Leadville 100! An endurance run this coming weekend.
Then we headed back to Leadville post office again and immediately got a great hitch from Hannah. We hung out for hours at a very busy coffee shop in Leadville doing all the internet stuff, or at least the priority stuff. Hannah stopped in on her way back from field work and offered us a return ride but we weren’t quite done with the Internet.
As we were walking out of town we met Jared who was headed to Twin Lakes to camp and got a ride back. He does volunteer trail construction and we had passed his project a few days back.We were back in Twin Lakes trying to get all the last minute things done and get back on trail.
Anxiety hit me just walking through the store, it’s back! How do I keep the peace you find in nature? I paused and made eye contact with the woman cashier and confessed to feeling anxious and looking forward to getting back on trail. She sympathetic and agreed with the sentiment.The day felt like it was slipping away and finally we were ready, after a gluten free pizza. I’ve been sooo hungry lately and I think I’m losing weight in spite of eating frequently.We shamelessly hitched 2.5 miles to the trailhead to avoid walking along the highway. Todd picked us up on his way to Salida. He’s a cook at a Thai/sushi restaurant. We plan on looking him up when we get there for our resupply…we didn’t get a Todd selfie!
We saw Colton again on the trail today he’s such a nice young man. He’s taking the Collegiate West route which is higher and longer. He’s a little faster so maybe we’ll see him later. We decided to take the East route since the elevation has been so tough and we’re not sure if we can safety run to the tree line every time a lightning storm hits. We met a girl named Arky (from Arkansas) who was near a lightning strike and was thrown by the blast wave and temporarily lost her hearing. She went home to recover for a couple of weeks and has returned to the trail with some residual tinnitus in one ear. Wow! Anyway Collegiate West is known for it’s views and lightning because a lot of the trail is above tree line. Lately we’ve had thunder and rain threatening daily.
A storm has been threatening all afternoon with occasional thunder and a couple sprinkles of rain. The cloud cover feels really nice.
Distant rain and thunder .
We had to Google moose poop while we were in Twin Lakes. It was on our list of things to do. Seams like it can be quite varied depending on diet, often looking similar to deer and elk just bigger.
My next question to ask is do ants go to bed at night? 🎶Do the ants go marching one by one to go down to the ground to get out of the rain?🎶 There are an awful lot of ants around Twin Lakes!
A plastic bit that covers the locking mechanism on my trecking pole came loose today, I think I might wear these things out and I need a new pair for Christmas…hint, hint.
Colton caught up with us again after exploring a side road. We made it around Twin Lakes and some campers leaving gave us some fresh water that they didn’t need. Then we ventured down to the lake to have dinner and hopefully talk to our husbands before we head back into the wilderness. We met Matt and his dog Leapa having a swim after climbing a 14er today (one of the many mountains above 14,000 feet here in Colorado). We again received trail magic in the form of more fresh water and citrus bubblies!
We ate our hot dinners by the lake and hiked on as the sun set. Cell service was good again and I got to talk to Jay. We officially entered the Collegiate East and set up camp as it grew dark.
I heard a large chorus of coyotes a few times but they didn’t come any closer to our camp and I slept well.
Jodie’s blog: bikehikerepeat.com