Hiking With Gadget Girl
It's All About The Adventure!
Distance: 16.8 miles
Start Elevation: 5,522
End Elevation: 6,117
Elevation Up: 2,830
Elevation Down: 2,239
The Colorado Trail is divided into 33 segments. Today we completed segment 1, 16.8 miles long. 32 more to go! It was a gorgeous start to our CT adventure. After a very windy night, we woke up at 5am to breezy conditions. In the car by 6:30am and started to hike by 7am.
The beginning of the trail starts at the Waterton Canyon, which is a gorgeous 6.2 mile gravel road walk. First off we see a herd of Big Horn Sheep up on the hillside. The males have those large curved horns and the females have straight pointy ones. There were a few babies mixed in between the adults. You can imagine how fast our cameras were snapping pics as they moved about on the steep hillside.
Continuing along the road we saw a weird spider like thing dashing across the road.
Right after that, we saw a heron perched on a rock in the middle of the river with its wings spread out.
We thought the first 6.2 miles was going to be boring, well we were wrong! We were passed by quite a few bike riders but they were very pleasant. One couple stopped us and was quite interested to hear about our trek. Cynthia asked if we had a website that she could follow and I was pleased to say yes, I did have one and gave here the name. They are locals and she would love to attempt to thru hike the Colorado Trail. Her husband Steve has published a book about his cattle dog called "Adventures with Durango Peak". Will have to check it out. He has a second book in the works that continues on from book one.
We arrived at the Strontia Springs Dam, complete with pit toilets, and shaded picnic tables.
Stopped for a snack and then headed up the hill to the single track. At noon we stopped for lunch and five pack riders passed us. Mountain bikes are allowed on most of the trail, except for the wilderness areas. There are ride arounds to get to the next section.
After lunch it started to get really hot. No water to be had, everything was pretty dried up. Arrived at the highest point of this segment and found cell service. Texted Dave that we had 3.5 miles of downhill to go until we arrived at the South Platte River Trailhead. Had to deploy my umbrella to keep the sun off me. My ankles were rashing out quite badly and I couldn't wait to reach the cool river to soak them.
We figured Dave and Bella would be there when we arrived and sure enough, there they were. Dave had Subway sandwiches waiting for us. Oh, we are so spoiled. Met a fellow from St Louis who goes by the trailname Magnet. He is 6 ft 6 inches and with his long legs, we probably won't see him again.
Found a spot to make camp and called it home for the night. As we waited for it to cool down enough to actually sleep, we heard thunder in the distance and then it started to rain. Then it started hailing, big white pellets smashing into the rain fly.
Well, this was a good test for my new tent. I bought it just for this trip knowing that we would get thunderstorms just about every day. As the ice pellets hit the rain fly, it actually forced moisture thru the rain fly and cause mist on the mesh. Zipped the mesh door closed and hoped.the new tent wouldn't cause everything to be wet inside. I was too tired to wait for the storm to finish so in went the earplugs, rolled over and went to sleep.
Note: If you are interested in seeing more pictures of this day, click here.