{"id":608,"date":"2016-08-22T23:54:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T23:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=608"},"modified":"2017-06-19T14:24:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T14:24:43","slug":"made-it-to-sula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/08\/22\/made-it-to-sula\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, August 22 Made It to SULA!"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>We needed about 2 more miles to get us out of the “CDT closed” zone, so we knocked them out, first thing. Whew! We did not want to get in trouble! But the rest of the day\u2014well, now I know why the SOBOs we met complained about “the terrible PUDs between Darby and Lima.” That’s what we did all day\u2014PUDs on the Divide. Unbelievably steep to the point of ridiculous!<\/p>\n

You have to learn to laugh about them or you would go crazy. Nice views though\u2014heavily forested mountains now, not rocky peaks. We got a ride down to Sula with a geologist on his way home from a rock-mapping backpacking trip. Sula Resort is great\u2014we really like it here!<\/p>\n

DETAILS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yesterday, even though we had a slow start because of the steep rocky trail, when we started “racing the fire” we finished enough miles to total 24 for the day.\u00a0 That meant today we have only 20 miles till we get to Chief Joseph Pass and the hitch into Sula.<\/p>\n

To save time, we ate breakfast in our tent while it was still a bit dark, then we hit the trail, going as fast as we could.\u00a0 We wanted OUT of the “trail closed” zone!\u00a0 Wow did we cheer when we passed the sign marking the end of it!\u00a0 Whew!<\/p>\n

The rest of the day we were mostly dealing with borderline unbelievable PUDs.\u00a0 Back before we reached Lima, every SOBO we met was bitterly complaining about “those awful PUDs between Darby and Lima!!!”\u00a0 I thought they were being a bit whiney.\u00a0 Now I know what they meant.\u00a0 One after another, we did PUD after PUD.\u00a0 They were horrendously steep and often long.\u00a0 On the PCT, none of this would happen–the trailbuilders would have contoured or switchbacked on these hills.<\/p>\n

So the only thing we could do was to laugh about it!\u00a0\u00a0 “Oh look, wheeeeeee!\u00a0 Another PUD!\u00a0 Let’s go!”\u00a0\u00a0 If we didn’t do that, I think we’d go nuts.\u00a0 Some of the PUDs were in forest, and some of them had nice views.\u00a0 Meanwhile, BEHIND us now (hooray!) the airplane was back, circling above the fire.\u00a0 Some of the PUDs were in a large burned zone from some previous fire–it was so sad to see whole mountainsides with nothing but black skeletons of trees.<\/p>\n

But one nice thing today was that the trail was less rocky and more just dirt pathway.\u00a0 Yesterday my feet got so sore from all the rocks that I almost caved in and took Motrin at bedtime.\u00a0 But I resisted the temptation–Motrin takes care of sore feet but it’s bad for the rest of you!\u00a0 The dirt pathway made the PUDs a lot more do-able, and by 4:30 pm we had finished our 20 miles and reached Chief Joseph Pass.\u00a0 We walked down from there to the highway and started trying to hitch a ride.<\/p>\n

But it was a tough hitch.\u00a0 I could not believe how many spiffy “yuppie-looking” cars\/people went roaring by.\u00a0 “How can this be?” we wondered.\u00a0 “We’re in Montana now.”\u00a0\u00a0 But finally, a slightly scruffy car stopped.\u00a0 It was a geologist, on his way home from a ROCK-mapping backpack trip.\u00a0\u00a0 He drove us on down, down, down and dropped us off at the Sula Country Store\/Resort.\u00a0 It was 5:30 pm and the store was closing at 6:00, so we had to hurry to rent a cabin and find something for dinner at the store.\u00a0 (The restaurant is only open for breakfast & lunch).<\/p>\n

It was a nice warm, somewhat cloudy evening.\u00a0 We sat at the picnic table by our little cabin and ate a very odd but tasty dinner before heading off to take showers and do laundry.\u00a0 Then it was time to collapse on a BED.\u00a0 We are tired!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 We needed about 2 more miles to get us out of the “CDT closed” zone, so we knocked them out, first thing. Whew! We did not want to get in trouble! But the rest of the day\u2014well, now I know why the SOBOs we met complained about “the terrible PUDs between Darby and Lima.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-montana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","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=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}