Hiking With Gadget Girl
It's All About The Adventure!
After oversleeping the alarm yesterday morning, I was ready for it this morning. After finding my morning tree, Linda was waiting for me to ask if we could sleep in another 30 minutes. Sure, I was up for that, except I decided to heat some water and make coffee instead. A treat on the trail. It's now standard to start out with almost all our clothing on in the morning, but when we immediately started up the steep trail, that lasted for half a mile and off came the warm clothing. The trail was steep all the way to the top of the pass. It took hours and when we got to the top, we had only logged 3.83 miles. Sheesh, this was going to be a long day
We did stop at beautiful Boss Lake and Hunt Lake and took pictures. Such gorgeous alpine lakes and a great excuse to stop to catch our breath.
Two mountain bikers came down from the top and we watched in amazement as they rode the steep, rocky, kick-your-butt-trail. They did stop at one nasty corner and whipped their bikes around before continuing. We never saw them again.
As we climbed, we watched the big heavy dark clouds roll in and hoped we could stay ahead of the weather coming our way. We thought we were done with the climbing, but noooo, we had more to do.
The air started getting colder and we stoppd to put on jackets. Then ice pellets started hitting us. I deployed my umbrella while Linda donned her poncho. We were pelted for awhile before dying out but we still wanted to hurry to stay ahead of those nasty clouds. We could see where it was dumping rain behind us. We pushed on and entered the Monarch Mountain ski area.
They were doing some logging and we were supposed to take an alternate route, but that would add another 1.6 miles and 1,170 more vertical feet. A northbound thru hiker said that being the weekend, they weren't working and we may consider just taking the normal trail instead of the alternate trail. 530 ft elevation gain versus 1,170? It was a no brainer. We had been seeing Hwy 50 from awhile so we we were looking forward to getting there and meeting up with Dave for our next resupply. It had been a wild weather day, plus a hard uphill in the morning and we were ready for a little break.
Since Dave had the RV in an KOA just 15 minutes away, we returned to the RV and did our resupply there, Plus having a bonus shower, real food, and not having to wake up to bone freezing cold tomorrow morning was a huge incentive. Tomorrow we finish the Collegiate West (CW) section and return to the regular Colorado Trail. We hope the trail becomes easier, because the past five CW sections just about kicked our butts!