Hiking With Gadget Girl
It's All About The Adventure!
Wow, was it cold last night. Quite a bit of condensation on top of my quilt. We didn't want to get going in the cold so we took our time. We finally departed at 7:15am but stopped for water before heading up the hill. Everything was frozen, even us!
We kept our thermals on for most of the morning. We were happy to get high enough so we were in the sun. Although it was uphill, the views were beautiful and kept our minds occupied as we thawed out.
The higher we went, the more spectacular the views were.
There were two marmots sunning themselves on some rocks and didn't mind us shooting a mass amount of pics of them.
One thing to note: as we keep hiking and gawking at the mountains, it's always a shock to suddenly see roads, houses, poorly built abandoned cabins, and mines (copper, gold, etc) strewn all over the place. Mining seems to be a big thing here and we see big disturbances on the hillsides everywhere. And of course, those Razors vehicles are everywhere.
Once we arrived above the 12,000 ft level, the trail took us mostly up and a little down, and then we arrived at the "High Point 13,271 Feet" on the Colorado Trail. Whoohoo!
Then we had a long, steep descent into the Carson Saddle Historic mining area. Wow, the place was riddled with trails and dirt roads. So glad there were Colorado Trail signs pointing us in the correct direction.
We ate lunch and watched dirtbikers and numerous Razors running about visiting the old mining digs and decrepit cabins.
After lunch we continued on our way up the next valley. Linda went ahead while I tied my shoe. As I turned to continue hiking, my left foot washed out, I lost my balance, and down I went on my right knee and then on my side. Ouch, my knee was pretty scraped up. I waited a few minutes hoping nothing else was damaged. I hoisted myself up, shook myself off, and carefully made my way up the trail. Caught up with Linda at the next water source, informed her on what happened, then cleaned up my knee. Linda wasn't her usual perky self so we tried to decide if we should stop early or try to get over the pass.
Since it was only 2:30pm, we decided to go over the pass into the Pole Pass drainage area. Wow, we thought the views on the east side were beautiful, the other side of the pass was even more gorgeous.
We started to see more northbound hikers, more than we have seen in other segments. We stopped at an unnamed lake for the night and set up camp.
It was blowing pretty hard and getting cold again. The marmots on the hillside were probably laughing at us trying to set up our tents in the wind. But we got the job done and snuggled in for the night...
NOTE: If you are interested in seeing more pictures of this day, click here.