SUMMARY:  We still did a lot of rollercoaster on the Divide today, but the trend was for up rather than down. The first big ‘up’ was almost unreal. It was so long, so steep, and so rocky. “Nobody in their right mind would ever want to tackle this,” I said. Yup—thruhiking is a really different mindset from normal.

After that, we had a lot of “climb over piles of snow as the trail goes through the forest.” We did meet 4 mountain bikers who were blasting their way through the snowpiles. Impressive! We reached Marshall Pass—views spectacular– of green meadows, snowy mountains, etc. Then came another very long climb, again dealing with getting over piles of snow, and we are camped at 11,800 feet, tucked into a little grove of trees for protection from wind. The trail ahead is completely snow covered.

DETAILS:  We were camped last night in a high altitude forest, and as it turned out, I didn’t guess quite rightly WHERE we were camped.  I thought we were 2 miles farther along than we actually were.  I miss having the “data book” that we had on the PCT: with that, we could pretty much “nail it” about where we stopped and how many miles we had done.  On the CDT, I have no idea, and I’m mostly guessing where we are.

The morning began with more rollercoastering on the Divide, but suddenly there came a moment when we popped out of the forest onto a large high prairie where we could see for miles!  Big, gray, pointy, snowy mountains lay right in front of us; it looked like we had only a few more “lumps ‘n humps” Divide to do before we reached them.  As we hiked along, we passed a couple of old, collapsed cabins–evidence that people once tried to live here at least part time.

Then it was back into the forest, and goodbye to views.  At first the trail was level, but then we came to an unbelievably steep and rocky uphill.  I stood at the bottom of it shaking my head.  “This is CRAZY!”  But there was even trail engineering–nicely built rock steps and other features–that headed literally straight up the hill.  “Do these Colorado trail people even know what a switchback is?” I said to Fixit.  Back on the PCT, we used to complain occasionally that the “PCT” should be renamed the “PSMT” for “Pacific Side of the Mountain Trail” because it contoured around mountains rather than going up n’ over.  Wish the CDT would go on the SIDES of the mountains more!  (We heard later from hikers who’ve done the AT that the AT also goes straight up and straight down, with no switchbacking or contouring.  Crazy.)

But we didn’t dither for long, and tackled the climb.  Whew.  It was tough.  But at the top–well worth it!  We were out onto grassy hilltops with awesome views again.  Wow!

Alas, that didn’t last long, either.  The trail headed back into forest, but this time it was forest-with-snow.  Groan.  We had no trouble spotting the trail, but were constantly having to climb over big piles of snow, including the fun of postholing.  Poor Fixit–he HATES postholing, and it kept happening to him.  Eventually the forest was thinner and there was a bit less snow on the trail, when to our amazement, we met a group of mountain bikers–the first we have seen!  Their approach to piles of snow on the trail was to blast on through!

Finally we reached Marshall Pass, where we stopped to get water, and admired a 1900’s era cabin that was available to hikers.  I would love to have camped there, but it was way too early to stop, and we were thinking “Monarch Pass!  Food!”  So we kept on going, into the second big climb of the day.  The route was a road at first (still often blocked with piles of snow), then it was back to trail.  Up, up, up it went.  Our tails were dragging.  The relentless uphill at 11,000-plus feet elevation, plus piles of snow and postholing, made for slow going.  We knew it was only 4 1/2 miles from Marshall Pass to another hiker cabin, but 7:00 came and we knew we would never make it to the cabin.  We couldn’t stop, though, since there was nothing but hillside and no flat places.  Finally at 7:15, we reached the top of the climb.  We were pretty much above treeline now, at 11,800 feet, and snow covered almost everything.  It took a bit of searching to find a small flat snowfree place tucked among a hardy grove of small trees.  We needed the protection–the wind is blowing again and it’s really cold.  But we are nicely sheltered now, and it is so good to be horizontal!  And it’s a very cheering prospect tomorrow–Monarch Pass, our next resupply!