SUMMARY:  Today’s first adventure was ‘Find the Trail’. We hunted a bit, no luck, so we bushwhacked up the mountain till we could actually see landmarks and find the trail. Then the trail itself traveled ridgetops (including a knife-edge ridge) with awesome views, before going to a pass where it was so steep that it was almost a cliff. Challenging!

Then a long and often frustrating downhill (snow, mud, several creek fords) till we reached the dirt road that switchbacked up to the CDT. The CDT was awesome—ridgewalking on the Divide, surrounded by what looked like a sea of snowy peaks. Epic! Tonight we are camped in a little hollow high on the ridge.

DETAILS:  We both had a very good night’s sleep last night, and that was a good thing–we were going to NEED it!  The first thing we had to deal with was wetness–since we were camped in a meadow near a creek, we woke up to everything soaking wet with dew.  The next item on our agenda was “find the trail”.  We tried and tried, looking everywhere, but no luck.  Finally we just said, “Forget it–let’s bushwhack straight up the mountain and get out of this river canyon so we can SEE some landmarks.  We’re never going to get anywhere just beating around in the forest.”

So up we went, dealing with many obstacles along the way, while we tried to sort of follow a little creek that was coming down the very steep hillside.  Fixit was very frustrated about not really knowing where we are and he charged on up, with me following behind, and silently praying very fervently, “Oh please, God, guide his eyes to see, and his thoughts to decide and his feet to go in a way that we can find the trail.”

Wow, talk about answered prayer–when we finally reached the top, we came over the edge precisely at a rock cairn that was there to mark the top of a high point.  Perfect!  From there we could see all around, all the landmarks, and it was easy to find the trail.  We did a bit of celebrating!

From that point we had nice trail tread; the route followed the ridgetops, with amazing views.  Then it headed for (yikes!) a knife edge ridge, which was a bit scary but do-able (for me–Fixit does not mind these things at all!).  Then came quite a climb up to a pass–Ley mentioned in his map note that it “looks like a cliff”.  No kidding!  The pass approach was so steep that I had to use my hands several times to help me scramble up.

The other side of the pass was an easy downhill into Bobtail Creek valley, and along the way we came to a cute little ptarmigan huddled in the trail, chirping and peeping.  He/she let us get really close.  By lunchtime we were down in the valley and found a great spot by a grove of trees to do a “garage sale” and dry out all our wet stuff.  But the early afternoon tried our patience as we followed the trail along the valley through snow, snowmelt mud, many creek crossings, and fallen trees to climb over/get around.  But we persevered until at last the trail (now an old road) began a switchbacking (what! switchbacks?!!) back to the CDT, which at that point was also following an old road.  Wow, did we cheer when we saw a CDT emblem on a tree!

Now we were way up high on the Divide, at 13,000 feet, walking along the ridgetops, with epic views of snowy mountains all around us.  It was almost like being in a huge sea, surrounded by white peaks like giant ocean waves.  We looked back to the south and marveled, “Did we really walk through all that?”  I felt sort of like when we were up high on Sonora Pass on the PCT and looked back to the south at the dramatic mountain terrain we’d just come through.  That day I also said to myself, “I can’t believe we came through all that, and here we are.”

In the late afternoon we met 3 different dayhikers, heading back to their cars.  They said they love coming up here.  I can see why!  The wildflowers are coming out, and though there was snow, it didn’t cause us any problems.  Tonight we are camped in a little hollow high on a ridge.  It’s cloudy and looks like it might rain.  We’ll see.  Today was one EPIC day!