This section of trail was almost entirely within the Bob Marshall wilderness, which must be the most remote part of the CDT. We had no cell service the entire time. We enjoyed fall colors and huckleberry and other bushes are turning brilliant shades of yellow and red.
Day 128 – Mile 2806.2 – Walking tired
This morning we woke up to a cold tent. We felt the temperature dropping last night so we expected it, but it was still much less pleasant than the last several unexpectedly warm mornings we had enjoyed. We did our usual morning routine including coffees and breakfast and then hit the trail, but I just could not fully wake up. All of the way until lunch I felt very tired, but at lunch I took a ten minute nap and then had some coffee, and for the rest of the day I felt much better. I will make sure to make even more coffee than usual tomorrow morning. One exciting thing that happened at lunch was that while Dirty Money and I were both napping a squirrel ran across both of us! It jumped on my arm and then ran across Dirty Money’s chest and then climbed a tree. That was surprising! In the afternoon we found something wonderful — A ripe huckleberry patch! We have seen a few berries here and there on the CDT, but before today we hadn’t come across any good patches with lots of fruit This one was great though, so we stopped in our tracks and spent a few minutes enjoying the sweet treats! We had a long descent to camp in the evening and got there after sunset. The days are definitely getting shorter now! -T
Day 129 – Mile 2833.7 – Two miles of extra credit
This morning we woke up with frost on the tent. Packing our backpacks and especially rolling up a frozen tent make our hands quite cold, so we collapsed our hiking poles, put them in our backpacks, and put our gloved hands into our puffy jacket pockets. Not too far into the morning, I realized I didn’t see Dirty Money’s footprints on the trail. We camped with her last night, and she left 15-20 minutes before us. I only saw horse prints. Tim checked the map quick, and we realized we had gotten a full mile off trail, meaning we had to walk another mile to get back to the trail. That was super sad! So we pushed all morning with no breaks and finally caught Dirty Money again at lunch. We walked through burned forests for most of the day, but the fall colors were quite spectacular. This evening, we found a beautiful spot to camp in a living forest. -R
Day 130 – Mile 2860.7 – Blow downs are baaaccck!
We woke up to a pleasant and surprisingly warm morning. We had a nice breakfast and three coffees and then got to hiking. We had a lot of climbing in the morning but the trail became relatively flat after we were 10 miles in and stayed that way. At lunch we caught up with a group of seven hikers that we knew were ahead of us. We always like bumping into other hikers on the trail, but aside from occasionally hiking with Dirty Money we tend not to join up with groups. After lunch the hiking got frustrating — we found ourselves climbing over many fallen trees. It was not easy hiking, but then again we aren’t on a 3,000 mile trail in search of easy hiking. On the bright side, Renee found an excellent huckleberry patch amidst the fallen trees and we distracted ourselves for a bit with the sweet berries. We got through the blow downs and made it to dinner. We had curry rice. Yum! We are enjoying another warm night — we’re getting very lucky with weather these days! -T
cdt
cracked down trees
Hahaha!