Day 047 - Continental Divide Trail - Monchego Creek to Razor Creek

Day: 047

Date: Saturday, 22 June 2024

Start:  Monchego Creek

Finish:  Razor Creek

Daily Kilometres:  34.4

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  1404.6

Weather:  Cold early then mild to warm and partly sunny.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts/Snacks

  Lunch:  Trail mix

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

Aches:  Dave - very tired and the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  None really.

Lowlight:  Maybe the mosquitoes as we set up camp and ate our dinner.  We both wore all our rain gear as protection.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

Last night's rain stopped around 8:30pm, but everything was still damp in the morning, including the tent.  We didn't start hiking until 6:20am, and the first part of today's journey climbed out of the high plains and into the forest.

After that, we spent most of our day hiking through conifer forest with the occasional aspen glade.  The CDT has been following the route of the Colorado Trail (CT) for the last few days, and we have seen a few more hikers, though none today, although we did see a mountain bike tourer camping.

For the latter part of the day, when we climbed up to over 11000’, the trail reminded us of the Appalachian Trail - hiking through forest and enduring some tough climbs for filtered views of more mountains and forest through the trees.

Our timing was good for the last part of the day.  One month ago, the 20km of trail we are currently hiking was under feet of snow with hikers having to “post hole” the whole way.  We saw a couple of snow patches.  They also had to deal with a huge number of blow downs (trees across the trail) but, in the last few weeks, a trail crew has been in and cleared them.  One estimate was over 200 trees but, based on what we saw today, probably more than that.  It made our lives much easier.

Around 5:50pm, we found a tent site at the top of a climb and set up camp amidst the trees.  The mosquitoes were bad, and we were very pleased to finally get in the tent, and we did have the occasional drop of rain, but nothing significant.