{"id":445,"date":"2016-06-05T04:55:34","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T04:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=445"},"modified":"2017-05-30T14:32:35","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T14:32:35","slug":"trail-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/06\/05\/trail-hunting\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, June 5 Trail Hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>It took us all day to accomplish relatively few miles, because there was so much snow and it was hard to find the trail.\u00a0 We followed footprints quite a bit, and they were a big help.\u00a0 We are up high–12,000 + feet.\u00a0 Mountains are everywhere, and deep valleys.\u00a0 The snow is melting very fast–water is running off the hillsides, and it is hard to find a dry spot even to sit.\u00a0 Postholing is also a problem–even our snowshoes posthole!\u00a0 We’d heard about the “mashed potato show” here–no kidding!\u00a0 Tonight we are camped on a little island in a sea of snow, and a thunderstorm is going on.\u00a0 But we are (we hope) near the trail, and (sort of) know where we are.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:\u00a0 <\/strong>Last night was surprisingly mild–none of our wet stuff froze, even though the sky was clear (clear sky usually = COLD night)\u00a0 It didn’t take us long to get going, because we were excited and at the same time apprehensive about facing\u00a0our first full day of Colorado and snow.\u00a0 The trail was very hard to follow–often it disappeared under snowdrifts and snowfields.\u00a0 Posts and rock cairns were few.\u00a0 In fact, just before we were planning to stop for breakfast, we were hiking along, following a trail of footprints, when I stopped to look at the map and discovered that the REAL trail was actually up on top of a ridge to our left.\u00a0 We climbed up to have a look, and sure enough–TRAIL!\u00a0 So we stopped, took off our packs, and ate breakfast with a glorious view of the mountains.\u00a0 While we were eating, two other CDT hikers came along, following the footprints down below, and we were able to\u00a0yell to them, “Up here!\u00a0 The trail’s up here!”\u00a0 They were very happy to see us, and it was fun to meet them.<\/p>\n

After breakfast, at first we had a decent amount of “walk the brown, grassy ridge, with a visible trail tread and rock cairns” but that didn’t last, and pretty soon everything was covered in snow, so we went back to following footprints.\u00a0 We dare not “fire up” our Guthook app, because we are trying to save it for times when we are really truly “lost.”\u00a0 But for awhile, every now and then there would be a nice rock cairn sticking out of the snow, to let us know we were on the right track.\u00a0 Finding those cairns was slow…there are other rocks sticking out of the snow, too.\u00a0 Fixit and I both would be standing and looking till one of us spotted something.\u00a0 We’d hike over to it (postholing even in snowshoes, sigh!) and sometimes it was a cairn, sometimes just a rock.\u00a0 Also, there were enough “bare ground sections” where we had to stop and take off our snowshoes, that the day began to feel like “snowshoes on, snowshoes off, snowshoes on, snowshoes off….”<\/p>\n

Not long before lunch, we came to a very large snowmelt mush swamp\u00a0mess–a mix of snow, ice, freezing water and grass.\u00a0 We had no choice but to march right through it.\u00a0 By the time we reached the other side, my feet felt like ice cubes.\u00a0 We stopped there in the sun to eat lunch, and when I studied the maps, I just groaned.\u00a0 For a whole morning of hiking, we’d only done a few miles, when normally we’d have done at least 12 or more.\u00a0 But Fixit and I were determined to just keep going and do the best we could.\u00a0 Most of our slowness was from having to stop so much to figure out where the trail went, or to take snowshoes off\/on, or scramble out of postholes.\u00a0 Finally the “trail”\u00a0 (footprints)\u00a0headed down to Dipping Lakes and then up\u00a0away from them.\u00a0 Thunder was rumbling, and when we stopped to eat supper, it began to rain.\u00a0 That’s when I made a very sad discovery–my umbrella was gone.\u00a0 I must have lost it while postholing, because several of those holes were pretty deep, and I was so preoccupied with trying to climb out that I did not\u00a0notice the umbrella had come loose from its moorings.\u00a0 I was really bummed.\u00a0 I use the umbrella for rain and for sun, both, and it really keeps me comfortable.<\/p>\n

So I had to sit in the rain, with no umbrella (just raingear) eating cold beef stroganoff and feeling very discouraged.\u00a0 Oh well.\u00a0 Deal with it.\u00a0 After supper, we headed out again, still following the footprints.\u00a0\u00a0There have been two sets\u00a0of them, and we had started calling them “Snowshoe Guy” and “Footprint Guy”.\u00a0I am not sure if\u00a0it was the two hikers we saw this morning, or not. \u00a0From the tracks, it looked like they were hiking together.\u00a0 But then, they separated.\u00a0 Footprint Guy went one way and Snowshoe Guy another way.\u00a0 Since Snowshoe Guy’s tracks were way easier to follow, we went with his.\u00a0 But then I said, “Wait a minute!\u00a0 I think we are going the wrong way.\u00a0 I looked at the compass, and sure enough, instead of heading NW,\u00a0Snowshoe Guy was now heading south.\u00a0 “Looks like he’s bailing out,” said Fixit.\u00a0 Well, we did NOT want to bail out, so we decided to look at Guthook and find the right trail again.\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 Turned out we were not too far off, after all, and before 7 pm, we spotted a rock cairn, and the trail.\u00a0 I remembered what the Lord had told me, His promise to always be with us and always help us to find our way, and I was very encouraged.<\/p>\n

Now we are camped on a little grassy\u00a0“island” in a “sea” of snow and snowmelt.\u00a0 The thunderstorm has returned–it’s raining, and there is some lightning, too.\u00a0\u00a0But we are snug in our tent, and hoping that tomorrow we can continue to find our way, plus praying for the lightning to not hurt anybody or anything.\u00a0 We sort of know where we are, and we know for sure that we are up HIGH–over 12,000 feet!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 It took us all day to accomplish relatively few miles, because there was so much snow and it was hard to find the trail.\u00a0 We followed footprints quite a bit, and they were a big help.\u00a0 We are up high–12,000 + feet.\u00a0 Mountains are everywhere, and deep valleys.\u00a0 The snow is melting very fast–water […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}