SUMMARY:  When we were in Sula, several local people were very excited about where the CDT would take us next. “You’ll be going into the Pintlers! Awesome!” they said, and rhapsodized about how beautiful the Pintler Mountains were and how great the backpacking is.

Well, once you get past the burn zone and into the heart of the Pintlers, yes! Awesome, rugged country with lots of lakes, rock climbing, etc. The CDT trail here literally rambles all over the place—South, North, East, West, and like the mountains, the trail is very rocky / rooty / rough.

That’s no problem to a recreational backpacker who’s not in a hurry, but it’s frustrating to thru-hikers trying to make miles. Oh well—it is amazing, rugged country here. Tomorrow we turn off the official CDT and start the Anaconda Cutoff.

DETAILS:  I think I pushed myself a bit too hard yesterday (or maybe it was the Xtreme blowdown zone??) and today I’m still tired.  Our camp last night was way down in a valley, and now we have at least two BIG passes to climb (both over 9,000′ at the top) with deep valleys in between.

For the second time, we did the “eat breakfast in bed” routine.  The only downside of doing that is…I have nothing to lean on, and I’m worried a bit about spilling something on my sleeping bag.  Other than that, it’s fine.

As usual, we were running low on water, and looking forward to the next source listed on our Ley map.  But when we got there, yuck!  It was stagnant nasty stuff in a meadow.  We decided to keep going–a good choice!  The next water was from a very nice spring.

By lunchtime we had reached the top of our first big climb–Pintler Pass.  Beautiful!  We were surrounded by wildflowers, with insects buzzing everywhere.  On one side of the Pass, the view up ahead is of deep forested valleys and mountains.  On the other side (where we had come from)  it’s dramatic rocky peaks and a lake.  What a great lunch spot!   Gray clouds were starting to build up that looked like a rain possibility, but in the end they never even dripped.

After lunch we tackled the long trail down into the forested valley, and up the other side to Rainbow Pass, where at the top we had great views of more lakes!  Along the way, we passed a very pretty cascade-type waterfall.  On the way down from Rainbow Pass, we stopped for an afternoon snack break, lying on soft, long grass.  Man, it felt good! We did not want to get up!  So comfortable!   But get up we did, and by dinnertime we had reached the turn to Cutaway Pass.  By now we were both really tired, and my poor scraped shins were really whining, but too bad–there were no flat places to camp, and we really wanted to get in some more miles.

So we went on for another almost 3 miles (which included a tough uphill & downhill) and camped near Warren Lake–the only place we could find where there was flat ground.  When we were at the top of the hill above the lake and were just starting down, we could feel a chilly breeze blowing up to us from the valley.  “It’s going to be cold tonight for sure,” we said to each other. Normally we don’t camp by lakes (don’t want any critters coming by in the night) but in this case, everywhere else is steep hillside.  Right now it sure feels good to be in a warm sleeping bag!  What a trail today–it wandered all over the place, in every direction.  But it was so beautiful–those folks in Sula were right about the Pintlers!