SUMMARY:  Before Fixit and l and I left Rawlins, we had the impression that we were headed into flatness in the Basin. Wrong! Now that we are close to being done, I can say the “Basin” is not flat. You are constantly going up and down, sometimes a little, sometimes (like today) a LOT. We had 3 steep “killer” hills today, and many long hills.

The trail winds, it turns, it twists—you really have to pay attention. The views are amazing, of mountains, distant valleys, rock formations, and no water unless you don’t mind yucky “cow water”. We carried enough water to last all day, and made it to Weasel Spring by 7:00pm, where we gorged on cold, wonderful water. We’re camped in a meadow—the wind is still blowing. Wow, are we tired.

DETAILS:  We had a great campsite last night–very comfortable, and a sunset that lasted for a long time.  But this morning, only a few minutes after we started hiking, we had yet ANOTHER “missed the turn” problem.  Grrrr.  We got to an intersection, did our best (without using Guthook–still trying to save battery) to figure out which way to go, and guessed wrong.  It took about 20 minutes of hiking to realize “this is not the CDT” and go back (up, of course!) to the intersection where we had messed up.  But in spite of the messup, we still made over 27 miles today.

In the morning, we were still in the mountains, with very alpine-looking scenery of rugged rocks, gnarly trees and pretty green pocket meadows (no water, though).  For most of the day, I felt like we were just going uphill, but that’s not really true–there were a few downhills.  But we did have to deal with THREE killer-steep climbs.  Several hikers passed us whom we thought were ahead of us–turned out that they had zero’ed in Rawlins, and we didn’t.  They are young and way faster than we are–an uphill where Fixit and I are slowly plodding up, they just bounce on up– but they also stop a lot more than we do.  And several hikers we’d never met before also caught up with us–turned out they had started anywhere from 1 to 2 weeks BEFORE we did, and we passed them, but now they are passing us.  I think it’s due to everyone starting to think, “Yikes!  Gotta get a move on or I’ll never make it to Canada!”

It was a hot day today, and our heavy water supplies in our packs went down steadily as we tried to stay hydrated.  We reached what I call “sagebrush hill country” and the CDT went winding over and alongside and up & down those hills.  Amazing rock formations were sticking out of the ground.  One of them looked like a very large dragon lying down.  There were occasional cow water ponds–yuck.  Glad we weren’t desperate enough to get water at one of those!

The wind began early today, and blew hard, so that made walking difficult.  We were always either walking into a headwind (tough) or dealing with side winds (enough to make us stagger).  BUT AT LAST, we FINALLY saw some wild horses!  A group of 4 were on the trail just ahead of us–a stallion and 3 mares—we walked slowly toward them, taking pictures.  Finally the stallion decided, “Time to go” and started shoving the mares to make them move away.  One of the mares refused, and she and the stallion had a face-off, rearing up and snapping at each other, before she finally gave in.

Later on, while we were sitting on a hill eating lunch, a lone stallion showed up.  He was a beautiful black horse, and he galloped in circles around us several times, as if he were showing off, or maybe showing us that he was boss?? Then he hung around for awhile and watched us before leaving to go hang out with his girlfriend, a pretty light brown mare.

In the afternoon, we hiked on as quickly as we could, trying to get to Weasel Spring.  But it was a steady uphill, and it was hot and the wind was making it tough for us.  Finally we were so tired that we just had to stop for awhile and lie down.  Several more young hikers passed us at that point, all looking pretty haggard, too.  One of them said, “You’ll find me at the spring, face down in the mud, probably.”

At last we rallied ourselves to push on, and at 7:00 pm, we finally reached the spring, which was in an enclosed area, with the spring itself inside a sort of tube thing way in the back of the enclosure. Two other hikers were already there, and  we had to take turns getting water, since there’s only room for one person at a time to access the spring.  I’d already drunk 5 liters today of warm water I carried through the heat, so I blew down a whole liter of COLD spring water!!  Ahhhh!  Then Fixit and I took enough water to get us to the next spring.

It was late, and we were too tired to hike any farther (hey, we did do over 27 miles, despite the difficulties!), so we exited the spring enclosure and set up our tent in the meadow nearby, on soft green grass.  Strangely, at the far end of the meadow, there was a car parked, and people, too.  Not sure what’s with them.  But we just wanted to get horizontal, and didn’t care.  There was a beautiful sunset and all I can say is, “The Divide Desert is NOT FLAT!–don’t figure on flat when you are out here!”