Day: 007
Date: Monday, 13 May 2024
Start: Hornbrook Mountain
Finish: Burro Mountain
Daily Kilometres: 33.2
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 205.7
Weather: Cool start then mostly sunny and very warm.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Noodles
Aches: Dave - exhausted and a few niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: Around 9:30am, having resupplied with water from a pond at Cow Camp about 5km earlier, we reached a road crossing and there, for CDT hikers, was a cache of many litres of water and, best of all, a drum containing cans of soft drink. Dave scoffed two cans of Coke while Julie enjoyed a root beer.
Lowlight: None really.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 5am and were walking by 6am as the sun rose. It was a beautiful morning and the first kilometres passed easily, even though they were uphill.
After we crossed a saddle to the eastern side of the range, the vegetation seemed to change and, for the first time, there were trees amid the arid scrub. Our first goal was to reach Cow Camp, where there was a pond, to get water. We made it in good time on nice undulating trail with plenty of views and Julie then scooped as much clean-looking water as she could from the scummy pond and filtered it for our breakfast and the next leg. The evidence was that Cow Camp was a popular place for cows to camp, but we had it to ourselves.
Not much later we happened on some very welcome trail magic (see above) near a road crossing. Such a pleasant surprise and so thoughtful of the anonymous benefactor.
From there the trail more or less followed a ridge line northwards towards the distant Burro Peak topped by multiple communications towers. We didn't realise at the time that we had to climb that mountain and that dominated our afternoon. The climb, which was steep at times, passed over seemingly endless false summits. Dave wore out quickly and we made slow progress as he plodded upwards.
On the plus side, at the higher elevations, we passed through pine forests on pine needle-carpeted trail and often had fantastic views to the east and west. It was near 5pm when we finally passed over Burro Mountain, just under 2500m (8000’).
There was a water source 2km ahead and Julie went ahead to get enough water for tonight and tomorrow morning's hike, while Dave descended as quickly as his shot legs and hammered feet would allow.
We hoped to find a campsite near the water source and were in luck, finding a beautiful spot amongst the towering pines with filtered views through to the valley below.
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