Day: 049
Date: Monday, 24 June 2024
Start: Marshall Pass
Finish: Monarch Pass (but staying at Salida)
Daily Kilometres: 20.4
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 1463.2
Weather: Cold early, then a calm sunny morning and partly cloudy afternoon with a bit of rain.
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Enchiladas Rancheros
Dinner: Burgers & fries, ice cream.
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles plus a lower left calf strain; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: The hiking today was magic. It was sunny, still and crystal clear as we followed a beautiful trail around the side of Peel Point and Mt Peck at an altitude of about 12000’ with dress circle views of magnificent alpine scenery in many directions. This is why we are here!
Lowlight: Nothing in particular.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were hiking by 6:10am, hoping that the 20km of trail we had left to Monarch Pass and Hwy 50 would be kind to us. We weren't disappointed (see above) with magnificent scenery in perfect conditions on relatively benign trail.
The time seemed to pass quickly as each corner revealed another scenic wonder. Mostly we were above the tree line with views and wildflowers, but occasionally dipped down into some conifer forest. In a couple of places there was snow across the trail which provided a challenge, but nothing too dangerous.
We saw a few hikers, including two CDT hikers we had also seen yesterday, as well as some mountain bikers, but generally had the trail to ourselves. We reached Monarch Pass, with a large parking area, a store, and a gondola to the top of an adjacent mountain (much lower than the ones we had just descended from), around 12:15pm.
We quickly stationed ourselves on the edge of Hwy 50 at the exit from the carpark and began hitching towards the town of Salida, about 35km east down from the pass.
We had only been there for about ten minutes when a car pulled up and four CDT hikers piled out. One of them was “Beaver”, who we had last seen 6.5 weeks ago in Lordsburg soon after we all started hiking, and he greeted us like long lost friends, as we did him. He is a regular contributor about water sources on the crowd-sourced navigation app we use, and partly because we knew him, and partly because his posts were informative and accurate, we have grown to trust his reports. We told him so and he promised to continue. He hikes faster than us, but had just taken six days off the trail to attend the wedding of a friend in New York.
Laura, the shuttle driver who had just brought the hikers up to the pass was happy to take us down to Salida and dropped us off at our motel at 1pm where we were grateful to be given an early check-in.
Keen for some lunch, we soon crossed the road to a Mexican restaurant where we had the best Mexican food (to our palates) of the trip so far, and at a reasonable price.
The rest of the afternoon was spent showering, sorting out and drying gear, hand washing some gear we don't want to launder in a machine and catching up on email and social media. We have had only fleeting Internet access in the last five days.
The Mexican restaurant also sold burgers and we bought some takeout from there for dinner, satisfied with a great day and looking forward to a day off tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment