Day: 070
Date: Monday, 15 July 2024
Start: Rabbit Ears Pass (but staying in Steamboat Springs)
Finish: Buffalo Pass
Daily Kilometres: 29.1
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2012.0
Weather: Warm and sunny with a thunderstorm and some rain in the late afternoon.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Microwaved breakfast burritos.
Lunch: Ham & cheese rolls
Dinner: Rehydrated meals.
Aches: Dave - very tired with the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: None in particular.
Lowlight: The mosquitoes were terrible in the evening. It was almost impossible to eat dinner without swallowing mosquitoes which were buzzing in hordes around us and crawling over everything.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We got an Uber (with a very chatty driver) from our apartment in Steamboat Springs at 7:30am and were back on the trail at Rabbit Ears Pass (named for a nearby mountain that looks like it has ears at its summit) by 8am.
The day was already mild and sunny and the mosquitoes were out. Our packs were very heavy with 6-7 days of food (one day's food = 1kg) to see us through to our next town, Rawlins in Wyoming. We could have carried less and resupplied along the way in a very small town called Encampment, but that would have involved hitchhiking from, and to, the trail on a very quiet road and the town didn't have much in the way of supplies or accommodation.
We decided to save time and hike straight through to Rawlins, though Dave was second-guessing this decision after a mile of hiking with his very heavy pack. We took some extra short breaks to make the day easier and, in the end, covered more ground than we had budgeted. Generally, on our first day out of town, we only budget for about 24km, given the likely later start, heavier packs and uphill hiking, so were happy enough with our 29km today.
It helped that the trail was generally easy walking, with some undulations. We followed a very broad ridge northwards through pine forests and across wildflower-carpeted meadows passing many attractive small lakes along the way. A few patches of snow here and there betrayed the fact that we were hiking at around 10000’ most of the day, rather than much lower. During the afternoon, we did spot a moose grazing on the far side of one of the meadows we crossed.
We met some day-hikers and overnight-hikers along the way, but no CDT hikers today.
Given we had covered the distance we hoped, we stopped a bit earlier than usual, at 5:30pm, soon after we had passed Buffalo Pass and entered the Mount Zirkel Wilderness, and found a tent site a little way off the trail.
The mosquitoes were horrendous while we were setting up camp and having dinner, and we adjourned to our tent as soon as we could to escape the hordes.
We recorded our 2000th kilometre of the trip today.
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