{"id":471,"date":"2016-06-17T00:14:40","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T00:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=471"},"modified":"2017-03-20T14:57:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T14:57:11","slug":"a-very-upward-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/06\/17\/a-very-upward-trail\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, June 17 A Very Upward Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>We still did a lot of rollercoaster on the Divide today, but the trend was for up<\/span> 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\u2014thruhiking is a really different mindset from normal.<\/p>\n

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\u2014views 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.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:<\/strong>\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I thought we were 2 miles farther along than we actually were.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 On the CDT, I have no idea, and I’m mostly guessing where we are.<\/p>\n

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!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As we hiked along, we passed a couple of old, collapsed cabins–evidence that people once tried to live here at least part time.<\/p>\n

Then it was back into the forest, and goodbye to views.\u00a0 At first the trail was level, but then we came to an unbelievably steep and rocky uphill.\u00a0 I stood at the bottom of it shaking my head.\u00a0 “This is CRAZY!”\u00a0 But there was even trail engineering–nicely built rock steps and other features–that headed literally straight up the hill.\u00a0 “Do these Colorado trail people even know what a switchback is?” I said to Fixit.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Wish the CDT would go on the SIDES of the mountains more!\u00a0 (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.\u00a0 Crazy.)<\/p>\n

But we didn’t dither for long, and tackled the climb.\u00a0 Whew.\u00a0 It was tough.\u00a0 But at the top–well worth it!\u00a0 We were out onto grassy hilltops with awesome views again.\u00a0 Wow!<\/p>\n

Alas, that didn’t last long, either.\u00a0 The trail headed back into forest, but this time it was forest-with-snow.\u00a0 Groan.\u00a0 We had no trouble spotting the trail, but were constantly having to climb over big piles of snow, including the fun of postholing.\u00a0 Poor Fixit–he HATES postholing, and it kept happening to him.\u00a0 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!\u00a0 Their approach to piles of snow on the trail was to blast on through!<\/p>\n

Finally we reached Marshall Pass, where we stopped to get water, and admired a 1900’s era cabin that was available to hikers.\u00a0 I would love to have camped there, but it was way too early to stop, and we were thinking “Monarch Pass!\u00a0 Food!”\u00a0 So we kept on going, into the second big climb of the day.\u00a0 The route was a road at first (still often blocked with piles of snow), then it was back to trail.\u00a0 Up, up, up it went.\u00a0 Our tails were dragging.\u00a0 The relentless uphill at 11,000-plus feet elevation, plus piles of snow and postholing, made for slow going.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We couldn’t stop, though, since there was nothing but hillside and no flat places.\u00a0 Finally at 7:15, we reached the top of the climb.\u00a0 We were pretty much above treeline now, at 11,800 feet, and snow covered almost everything.\u00a0 It took a bit of searching to find a small flat snowfree place tucked among a hardy grove of small trees.\u00a0 We needed the protection–the wind is blowing again and it’s really cold.\u00a0 But we are nicely sheltered now, and it is so good to be horizontal!\u00a0 And it’s a very cheering prospect tomorrow–Monarch Pass, our next resupply!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 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\u2014thruhiking is a really different […]<\/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-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","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=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}