SUMMARY:  It snowed last night–just a dusting, but it was really pretty along the trail this morning–even the old snowdrifts looked pristine and white.  But every meadow we crossed had turned into a swamp of freezing cold snowmelt water.  Moosh, goosh.  Not fun.  Then in the forest, it was crunch, crunch, whooompf as we walked on snow and sometimes postholed.  A very long (most of the day) downhill through changing forest suddenly ended with a killer climb up a colorful sandstone mountain.  Huff & puff!  But we made the top, ate some food and now we are cowboy camped despite some clouds that look a bit iffy.  We are tired.  But what a varied day!

DETAILS:  It sprinkled and splattered rain on us for a little while last night, and then the rain turned to snow. Fixit is an old guy, which means he has to get up a lot at night, and he said when the snow hit the ground, it mostly just melted, but the snow on our tent didn’t, so every time he got up, he also knocked the snow off the tent.

It was 30 degrees this morning when we were packing up, and there was a very pretty dusting of snow along the trail—even the old snowdrifts looked pristine and white. But a bitter cold wind was blowing, and the trail was mostly either downhill or level, so it was a bit hard to stay warm.  The trail tread itself grew muddier and muddier.  In some places, we had to make fairly extensive detours to avoid the mud.

Finally we came to a wide green meadow.  “Look, how pretty!” I said.  We could see where to go–there was a post–but when we started across, we made the discovery that the pretty meadow with its green grass was in reality a snowmelt swamp.  We had no choice but to slog across in the ice-cold water and mud and grass.  Moosh, goosh!  By the time we reached the other side, our feet were freezing.  Then the trail headed into the forest, where there was a lot of old snow, so it was crunch, crunch,  then whoompf, we’d posthole.  Fun!  But on the bright side, it was pretty obvious where to go, because there were plenty of footprints in the snow.

The same thing happened at every meadow we came to.  Meadow = freezing swamp.

Eventually the snow was less, and that’s when the CDT did one of its tricks where the trail LOOKS like you should go straight, but in reality, you are supposed to make a sharp turnoff.  We kept on going straight, but fortunately, only a short time later, I became uneasy.  I had been trying really hard to keep track of where we were on the map, and I asked Fixit to stop so I could check.  Sure enough, we weren’t going the right way. “We’re going south and following a creek,” I said.  “Not good.  We should be going east, and NO creek.”  So we turned around and went back very carefully, till we found the turnoff.

For much of the rest of the day, the trail mostly headed downhill, and through a lot of forest (some of it beetlekilled, sadly)  and aspen groves.  In the late afternoon, we found ourselves at the foot of a colorful sandstone mountain, and the CDT headed right up it!  Great, a killer climb at the end of the day!  Oh well, we tackled it anyway and made it to the top (though we felt pretty fried).  Across the top and down the other side we went, into a green valley with a corral.  And that’s where we stopped and camped.  There were some nasty-looking clouds overhead, but we were so tired that we just cowboy camped and hoped for the best.   This has been one varied day!