CDT Days 83-85 – Red desert

We finished hiking through the Great Divide Basin. It was hot but beautiful and full of wildlife (and livestock). There was smoke in the air from nearby forest fires which blocked some of the views (but filtered the sun a bit).

Day 83 – Mile 1675.1 – Shade tree

Today was another nice day in the Great Divide Basin. It was pretty hot all day. We kept the hoods on our sun hoodies up, which helped. We saw lots of pronghorns again today, some greater short horned lizards, and Tim saw a weasel. The Wyoming pronghorns have white butts. (The New Mexico pronghorns did not.) There were also cattle, horses, and sheep grazing. We actually found a shade tree for our lunch break! It was amazing. It was right by a small stream that had been trampled by cows, and there was cow poop all over. We didn’t mind the cow poop smell though because the shade made such a difference. The views were outstanding all day–open with rolling hills and not much other than sagebrush. -R

Day 84 – Mile 1707.4 – Swimming!

When we woke up this morning we knew from our maps that there would be a swimming opportunity before bed. That kept us motivated all day! The sun came out pretty early and was relentless all day. In the morning we walked past hundreds of sheep and a person on horse along with a dog overseeing then.  Around lunch time, over 15 miles into the day, we realized we hadn’t seen a single tree or other shady spot all day. Fortunately we had lunch just after noon next to some tall rocks, so by squeezing up next to them and contorting our bodies a bit uncomfortably we were able to get half-covered by shade. Nice. In the afternoon the sun got worse like it always does, but there is a lot of haze in the air that kept it from being unbearable (probably smoke from nearby forest fires). On the bright side, the landscape is beautiful and absolutely surreal. Even though the last few days have been entirely on dirt roads instead of trail, there are practically no cars or people on these roads and this feels like one of the more remote parts of the trail we have been on. For miles in every direction there is absolutely nothing but sagebrush, rocks, and dirt/sand.  We did see tons of pronghorn, greater short-horned lizards, and a badger though! Towards the end of the day we crossed paths with some bikers headed south. They said they no longer needed their bear spray so we could have it — that was really nice of them because bear spray is not cheap! Finally we hit the Sweetwater River for some swimming! The water was cool but not too cool–perfect to sit in for a little while 🙂 . We left there at about 8 pm and hiked on a couple more miles until we found a nice place to camp. It was a nice day. -T

Day 85 – Mile 1722.3 – South Pass City / Landers

Today we had a pretty flat/easy hike to South Pass City. Peanut caught up to us a few miles before town. She is only the second northbound thruhiker we have seen since leaving Rawlins. We have been leap frogging with Chocolate Chip, but expected to see more people on this stretch. We made it to South Pass City around noon. It was more of a museum than a city. We picked up our resupply box with our homemade dinners. I also got new shoes, but Tim’s shoes didn’t make it. We had root beer and popsicles then continued on a few miles to the highway where we hitched into Lander to buy more food. Lander turned out to be a great stop! We got showers and laundry. NOLS sells bulk backpacking food, so we got tasty and lightweight breakfasts and lunches for the next stretch which we think will take us about seven days. We got a new water filter because I poked a hole in one of ours by hitting it too hard on a rock. (It was going super slow, so I was back flushing it to speed it back up. You are supposed to tap it a bit to loosen up the chunks and then run clean water through it backwards. I was tapping it a bit too hard I guess. Oops.) We also hit up the grocery store and a few restaurants. We camped in the city park and will head back to the trail tomorrow. -R