Hiking With Gadget Girl
It's All About The Adventure!
Cold mornings are now standard for us and takes a bit of walking to warm up. The sun helps once it arrives on the scene.
We woke up in one piece. After the episode last night with the crazy woman, we had our fingers crossed that nothing else happened. And it didn't.
This past winter was quite harsh on the trail. There were many avalanches that created massive debris fields over the trail. This one didn't reach the trail, but we were quite impressed with the size of it.
We were at elevation 10,489 and had a climb up to 12,280. The trail was much better than yesterday's climb. The trail brought us up to a big bowl with wildflowers everywhere. There was still snow on the top ridges which always enhances the view.
We were astonished to see that there was a cabin called "Jane's Cabin" way up there. It looked like a beautiful three story cabin complete with propane tank. According to the sign, anyone can rent this cabin. There was evidence that you could ski, snowshoe, hike, or snowmobile in. Wouldn't that be great fun?
Once we crested over the pass, we took a break at a beautiful stream. I woud love it if we could keep hiking at the 12,000 ft level. The air is so fresh and clean.
We did see thunderstorms starting to develop so we made our way over two more passes and then started the long downhill, 2,953 ft elevation loss.
Sometimes going downhill is harder than going uphlll. It was steep in places which puts pressure on the feet and knees. We just missed full bloom for the wildflowers, but it was still beautiful. We were almost at the bottom and ran into a trail crew rebuilding a section of the trail. They had a few alpacas with them. Finally arriving at the road, we had had to walk the road a bit to catch the trail one again. Saw a skull sitting on a fallen log. Haven't a clue on what it was.
We stopped at Camp Hale which was a WWII training facility for alpine soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division of the U.S. Army. It was cool to see the remaining bunkers that were still standing.
We now had a decision to make. Our mileage stood at 14.3 for the day. We could camp here or go a bit further. The problem was, we wanted to go to Fiddler Creek, but there was that recent report of a local bear hanging out there who attacked Ursaks (our bear/rodent resistant food bags). We didn't want to deal with a bear so we made the decision to hold short and try to make up mileage tomorrow.
NOTE: If you are interested in seeing more pictures of this day, click here.