August 26th
Segment 16 & 17
18.3 miles, camped at mile marker 285.5
Jodie woke at 4:30, I forgot to set my alarm again. It had rained last night, I slept so hard I hadn’t noticed. I slept amazingly! Everything was wet and fresh and clean smelling. We ate a hot breakfast and started walking with our headlamps as the world lightened around us. Sunrises never get old, I’m grateful for each one!
We’re now in cow country. We thought it would be long easy stretches of meadows. It’s highland cow country! Still long steep stretches up and down of poorly architected trails that have turned into rocky creek beds. Not only is it physically difficult to navigate and hard on your feet, ankles and knees, it’s mentally challenging too. Constant focus, looking for the next safe step.
There are also some nice rolling sections and meadows, and cows.
Mojo and Jilly Bean caught up with us at watering hole. We haven’t seen them since Breckenridge.
They just finish the Collegiate West and reported they were very lucky with the weather. It was nice catching up with them. They reported that Gravity, whom we hiked with earlier, had to leave the trail for home after a second attempt at battling Acute Mountain Sickness, sad. He was in such good condition and a strong hiker. This altitude is difficult! We’re in a section of forest that allows motorized dirt bikes on the trail. It happens to be Saturday and we got buzzed by quite a few dirt bikes. I can’t wait to be back in the motor free zone. It was really frustrating sitting and having lunch near a stream when 3 of them came zooming through. We stood and moved away from the trail so as not to get hit by flying rocks.We weren’t quite finished with lunch when rain the came in and said otherwise. It came in fast and heavy along with some hail and thunder. The trail quickly turned into a creek.
Our shoes were soaked through and our feet were cold, we kept moving and soon it lightened up and stopped, hints of blue sky began to appear.
Our last good water for quite a few miles is a cow trough with a spigot.
We ate dinner near the trough in a rocky area free of cow pies.
We were visited by a few cows and got a little nervous when the bull found us interesting to stare at but he eventually wandered off and laid down a ways away, keeping an eye on us.
We were carrying a lot of water, our packs were so heavy! We saw Mojo and Jilly Bean again and said hi briefly before moving on, hoping for a few more miles. We ended up getting 4 extra miles in because we couldn’t find a campsite! We set up camp as it started to mist. The moon rose. We burrowed inside our tents. It started to rain softly as we went to sleep.
