CDT Days 55 – 57 – Rain

This stretch of trail took us into the Collegiate Peaks, which are mountains names after colleges. We spent much of the time fighting inclement weather.

Day 55 – Mile 1062.5 – Monarch Pass

The goal for today was to make it to a gift shop at a highway crossing called “Monarch Pass” to resupply. There was rain in the forecast this morning, but when we woke up it was still relatively dry so we hit the trail ASAP. It rained on and off today, but we stayed mostly dry. The trail was crowded with far more hikers than we typically see. It is fun to talk to so many others. Around lunch we passed a ski-hut which was perfect timing because it was raining. We lunched under protection from the rain with Dirty Money, Lambchop, and Unit. Two bull moose(s?) also decided to have lunch near the cabin, and they didn’t mind at all when we took pictures from a safe distance. After lunch we hiked on to Monarch Pass with very few breaks. We leapfrogged with the others, so the time flew by. The gift shop was loaded with snacks to supplement the meals we sent ourselves. A company called Farm to Summit also sent us some food, and it looks great! The gift shop sold hot food too, so we each had a hot salted pretzel. We end up craving bread a lot while hiking, so it really hit the spot! When we finished our chores it was raining, so we suited up into our rain gear (which has been getting a lot of use lately) and headed back out to the trail to find a campsite. Once there, we had creamy spaghetti for dinner. Yum! -Y

Day 56 – Mile 1086.4 – Hail, rain & SNOW

Today we woke up to fog again. After a few days of rain/fog/condensation overnight, we really needed to dry out our tent and sleeping bags (especially because reports from Monarch Pass said the rain will continue). A little after 8 am the sun came out and there was a nice wind, so we stopped for 45 minutes or so to try to dry things out a bit. It wasn’t super warm yet, but it helped a lot, especially with the tent. The rest of the morning was foggy off and on. After lunch, we had rain off and on (heavy at times with a bit of thunder). At around 6 pm, it was time to climb to higher elevation for a bit. We started noticing fresh snow on the ground. Towards the top of our climb it got windy and started snowing. We started hiking faster towards lower elevation, but we still had awhile at high elevation. Finally we started descending, but we were starting to get really cold. After about two hours in the snow storm, we finally got into the trees and low enough for the snow to stop. We found water and then set up camp as fast as possible. Our fingers were so cold that it was really hard to do things like open the buckles on our backpacks and take off our wet shoes. After a half hour or so in our mostly dry sleeping bags, we finally started to warm up. We cooked a nice warm dinner, which helped warm up our hands, and then fell asleep. -R

Day 57 – Mile 1110.3 – Good recovery from yesterday

Our alarms went off this morning at 4:30 like always, and we kept sleeping. Backup alarms went off until almost 7 before we were interested in moving. We needed some extra sleep to recover from yesterday. Eventually we got moving… We started hiking at about 8:15. Despite spending much of the morning above 12,000 feet, the weather was nice — it sunny and warm enough to enjoy. At lunchtime we were able to dry out all of our stuff. At 1 we were wrapping up lunch and only had 9 miles hiked, but we felt good about it nonetheless. The afternoon was very smooth hiking over beautiful mountain passes, and it only rained on us a little bit. As we got close to our intended campsite, it started to rain. Just as the rain was picking up, we found an earlier campsite and quickly set up the tent. All of our stuff is dry since we dried it out this morning, we are dry since we are in our tent, and tomorrow morning we’ll be dry since the rain will probably let up overnight. It was a perfect day of hiking! -T