SUMMARY:  It took us all day to accomplish relatively few miles, because there was so much snow and it was hard to find the trail.  We followed footprints quite a bit, and they were a big help.  We are up high–12,000 + feet.  Mountains are everywhere, and deep valleys.  The snow is melting very fast–water is running off the hillsides, and it is hard to find a dry spot even to sit.  Postholing is also a problem–even our snowshoes posthole!  We’d heard about the “mashed potato show” here–no kidding!  Tonight we are camped on a little island in a sea of snow, and a thunderstorm is going on.  But we are (we hope) near the trail, and (sort of) know where we are.

DETAILS:  Last night was surprisingly mild–none of our wet stuff froze, even though the sky was clear (clear sky usually = COLD night)  It didn’t take us long to get going, because we were excited and at the same time apprehensive about facing our first full day of Colorado and snow.  The trail was very hard to follow–often it disappeared under snowdrifts and snowfields.  Posts and rock cairns were few.  In fact, just before we were planning to stop for breakfast, we were hiking along, following a trail of footprints, when I stopped to look at the map and discovered that the REAL trail was actually up on top of a ridge to our left.  We climbed up to have a look, and sure enough–TRAIL!  So we stopped, took off our packs, and ate breakfast with a glorious view of the mountains.  While we were eating, two other CDT hikers came along, following the footprints down below, and we were able to yell to them, “Up here!  The trail’s up here!”  They were very happy to see us, and it was fun to meet them.

After breakfast, at first we had a decent amount of “walk the brown, grassy ridge, with a visible trail tread and rock cairns” but that didn’t last, and pretty soon everything was covered in snow, so we went back to following footprints.  We dare not “fire up” our Guthook app, because we are trying to save it for times when we are really truly “lost.”  But for awhile, every now and then there would be a nice rock cairn sticking out of the snow, to let us know we were on the right track.  Finding those cairns was slow…there are other rocks sticking out of the snow, too.  Fixit and I both would be standing and looking till one of us spotted something.  We’d hike over to it (postholing even in snowshoes, sigh!) and sometimes it was a cairn, sometimes just a rock.  Also, there were enough “bare ground sections” where we had to stop and take off our snowshoes, that the day began to feel like “snowshoes on, snowshoes off, snowshoes on, snowshoes off….”

Not long before lunch, we came to a very large snowmelt mush swamp mess–a mix of snow, ice, freezing water and grass.  We had no choice but to march right through it.  By the time we reached the other side, my feet felt like ice cubes.  We stopped there in the sun to eat lunch, and when I studied the maps, I just groaned.  For a whole morning of hiking, we’d only done a few miles, when normally we’d have done at least 12 or more.  But Fixit and I were determined to just keep going and do the best we could.  Most of our slowness was from having to stop so much to figure out where the trail went, or to take snowshoes off/on, or scramble out of postholes.  Finally the “trail”  (footprints) headed down to Dipping Lakes and then up away from them.  Thunder was rumbling, and when we stopped to eat supper, it began to rain.  That’s when I made a very sad discovery–my umbrella was gone.  I must have lost it while postholing, because several of those holes were pretty deep, and I was so preoccupied with trying to climb out that I did not notice the umbrella had come loose from its moorings.  I was really bummed.  I use the umbrella for rain and for sun, both, and it really keeps me comfortable.

So I had to sit in the rain, with no umbrella (just raingear) eating cold beef stroganoff and feeling very discouraged.  Oh well.  Deal with it.  After supper, we headed out again, still following the footprints.  There have been two sets of them, and we had started calling them “Snowshoe Guy” and “Footprint Guy”. I am not sure if it was the two hikers we saw this morning, or not.  From the tracks, it looked like they were hiking together.  But then, they separated.  Footprint Guy went one way and Snowshoe Guy another way.  Since Snowshoe Guy’s tracks were way easier to follow, we went with his.  But then I said, “Wait a minute!  I think we are going the wrong way.  I looked at the compass, and sure enough, instead of heading NW, Snowshoe Guy was now heading south.  “Looks like he’s bailing out,” said Fixit.  Well, we did NOT want to bail out, so we decided to look at Guthook and find the right trail again.  Whew!  Turned out we were not too far off, after all, and before 7 pm, we spotted a rock cairn, and the trail.  I remembered what the Lord had told me, His promise to always be with us and always help us to find our way, and I was very encouraged.

Now we are camped on a little grassy “island” in a “sea” of snow and snowmelt.  The thunderstorm has returned–it’s raining, and there is some lightning, too.  But we are snug in our tent, and hoping that tomorrow we can continue to find our way, plus praying for the lightning to not hurt anybody or anything.  We sort of know where we are, and we know for sure that we are up HIGH–over 12,000 feet!