SUMMARY:  We were eating breakfast by the trail this morning after completing one of the “killer uphills” (otherwise known as PUDs for ‘pointless up and downs’), when a parade of CDT thruhikers went by, all cheering “Wyoming today!” We cheered, too.

Awhile later, we met a young couple who are riding to Mexico from Canada, as much as possible near the Divide. They warned us that many hikers they’d met were complaining about how awful the CDT is after the Wyoming border—hard to follow (just cairns), swampy, and full of blowdowns. They showed us a much nicer route, so that’s what we did!

But when we reconnected finally with the CDT, it was no trail, just cairns in the woods, and on rocky hillsides. So far we are able to figure it out, but it sure is frustrating. So Wyoming, yay! Sort of…

DETAILS:  We were really excited about reaching Wyoming today, and set off with great enthusiasm on easy trail (a FWD road, actually)…but then we reached the PUD’s (“Pointless Ups & Downs”).  Actually, they were mostly UP!   We stopped at the “top” of one of them for breakfast, and while we were eating, a whole parade of CDT thruhikers passed us by.  Everybody was cheering “Wyoming today!  Wyoming!” and we cheered, too.

Then it was back to the PUD’s.  At the top of another one of them, we met a very nice young couple who were RIDING (mulepacking, to be precise!)  from Canada to Mexico, trying to stay as close to the Divide as they could.  They asked if we were CDT hikers, and when we said yes, they told us, “We’ve been meeting a lot of you guys the last few days and everybody says that once you reach the Wyoming border, the CDT trail is awful–hard to follow, lots of blowdowns, and lots of swamp.”  Well, that confirmed what I’d read in CDT blogs from last year, and I sort of groaned inwardly at the thought of what we were facing.

But–the young couple said that they had found another way to go that was a bit longer than the trail, but way easier.  They pulled out their maps and showed us, and I marked their route down on OUR maps.  We thanked them very heartily, and continued on.  Just before their alternate route began, we stopped for lunch, and as we were eating, along came another CDT hiker–Stop ‘n Go, who is from Berkeley, CA.  We come from the San Francisco Bay Area, too, so it’s fun to see someone from “back home”.   We told Stop ‘n Go about the alternate, but he is determined to stick with the CDT.

A short jaunt on a side trail took us to the dirt road the young couple had described, and from that point it was easy walking, which included an “Entering Wyoming” sign!   Yay!  We stopped and cheered and took pictures!  But when we finally reconnected with the CDT, we were shocked.  There was no trail at all, not even a trace–just wooden posts stuck into rock cairns,  on a steep, rocky hillside that made it hard to spot the cairns, because there were so many other rocks lying around.

So it was back to steep climbs over rocky ground, constantly hunting for the next cairn.  To add to the “fun”, the route is not straightforward–it frequently made a sharp right or left turn.  And I was growing more and more concerned about Fixit.  He is walking all bent over toward his left side, and going slower and slower.  Not good.

But we persevered, and at 7 pm, we found a great campsite on a saddle, near one of the cairns. Looking off to the east, we could see the smoke from a forest fire, but the wind is blowing it away from us, so we figured we were OK for now.  Stop ‘n Go came along after we were into our tent.  He said the official CDT was “tough, but do-able”.  Both he and we are planning to bypass Encampment and head straight for Rawlins.

Fixit and I are very tired (as usual), and I hope Fixit is feeling better tomorrow.  Something is definitely wrong with him.  But it’s still very cheering to know that we have made it to Wyoming, and we’re looking forward to doing “The Big Three”–the Great Divide Desert, the Wind River mountains, and Yellowstone.