Day: 064
Date: Tuesday, 09 July 2024
Start: Monarch Lake
Finish: Grand Lake
Daily Kilometres: 27.6
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 1854.4
Weather: Cold early then warm and sunny in the morning and cloudy with scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon.
Accommodation: Cabin
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Burritos
Dinner: Burgers & fries, cheesecake.
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: Nothing in particular.
Lowlight: Nothing in particular.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at the usual 5am and were walking by 6am on a cold morning, but not as cold as yesterday when we were 3000’ higher.
Our campsite this morning was at 8320’ and our day was largely spent at a similar elevation as we followed a series of lakes and waterways - Lake Granby, the Colorado River, Shadow Mountain Lake - to the town of Grand Lake sitting on, you guessed it, Grand Lake.
The trail wasn't very easy early, as hoped, as we climbed to a ridge overlooking Lake Granby. We had about 24km to Grand Lake where we had accommodation booked and planned to resupply. In a perfect world, we would have had an easy trail and be in Grand Lake in time for a restaurant lunch.
The trail did get easier, though there were a few scary bits along the dammed Colorado River where the trail was very narrow and gravelly, crumbling away in parts, on an almost vertical slope high above the river.
The lakes and waterways were beautiful and calm early, with a spectacular backdrop of mountains. We saw a lot of watercraft, mostly pontoon boats, with vacationers out enjoying themselves as well as plenty of day-hikers, some of whom knew about the CDT and were keen to chat.
We did make good time after the earlier technical trail and reached the main street of the cute little town of Grand Lake soon after 1:30pm and found a Mexican restaurant that looked cheap enough for us to afford. Everything in Colorado is expensive, though generally good quality. Grand Lake itself was very busy. It has a contrived western feel, with wooden sidewalks, and is a vacation/outdoors town. The wooden sidewalks have the CDT logo branded into them.
Following lunch, we visited the nearby outdoor store and Dave purchased much-needed new inner and outer socks. In just the last few days, large holes had appeared in all four socks!
That done, we began the journey to our booked accommodation high on a hill overlooking Grand Lake, stopping at a small grocery on the way to buy some food. After checking in to our very expensive cabin around 4pm, part of a large lodge within Rocky Mountain National Park, Julie made the trip back down the mountain to buy some additional supplies needed for the next four days hiking.
Later we brought takeout dinner at the restaurant attached to the lodge for dinner and had a reasonably early night.
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