Hiking With Gadget Girl
It's All About The Adventure!
We had a big uphill in the morning that started at our campsite at 10,482 ft and climbed up to 12,490 feet. The trail was quite challenging and I couldn't stop thinking about the four bikepackers who had to get their bikes up and over that pass. One of the bikers told us at lunchtime that they basically pushed their bikes the whole way up. We struggled ourselves when we approached 12,000 ft, it was slowly hike for 50 feet, rest for two minutes.
This continued until we reached the top and once there, all thoughts of the struggle to get there were swept out of our minds as the views were gorgeous.
We had a full on view of Copper Mountain and its village, plus all the surrounding mountains behind it. Took a long lunch while a thru hiker stopped to visit. He was actually doing the Continential Divide Trail. The bikers finally arrived, wow, I was impressed.
We started down the other side in anticipation of our trail angel Dave bringing our next four day resupply and Subway sandwiches. Yum! From the top we decended 2,670 ft. This is one hike I wouldn't bring the Dusty Devas on. Going down was very steep and our poles helped us from sliding down the trail. We were almost to the bottom of the trail when we came across our first avalanche debris field, and there was snow underneath!
We were so happy to see Dave as he and Bella were just starting to walk on the trail to meet us. Copper Mountain is putting in a new lift so a bunch of parking lots were closed. The trail actually had a two mile detour so it took a bit of logistics to get the Jeep and look for a place with shade to do a resupply, but there was nary a park or shady spot to be had. So we drove to the other side of Copper Mountain, found a road that took us back to the trail and did our resuppy there. It was very hot in the sun.
Dave drove us up the road to where it intersected with the trail and dropped us off. He saved us a little bit of hill hiking in the sun. We were pretty pooped from the big elevation gain and drop from the morning so all we wanted to do was find a campsite. Well, Copper Mountain doesn't want hikers to camp within four miles of their resort. Since we were dropped off at the edge of the resort, we hiked 2.5 miles with another 495 elevation gain until we found a campsite with a creek nearby.
We wandered up to the upper campsite and a woman declared that that site was taken. So we camped below on slopey (is that a word?) ground. Pitched tents just in time for the thunderstorm to roll in.
As we were settled in for the night, a fellow hiker went up to the upper campsite where that woman was, and she came out of her tent with a knife and charged him. Lots of screaming going on. He came down to where we are and was very upset that a woman tried to attack him. Yikes.
We are out of cell phone range from Copper Mountain so will post journal and pics when we find cell service again. (Found it at Tennessee Pass!)
NOTE: If you are interested in seeing more pictures of this day, click here.