Day: 074
Date: Friday, 19 July 2024
Start: Battle Pass
Finish: Sage Creek Road
Daily Kilometres: 48.3
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2171.8
Weather: Mild early then mostly warm and sunny in the morning with thunderstorms and rain periods in the afternoon.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Snacks
Dinner: Snacks
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - painful trench feet.
Highlight: Nothing in particular.
Lowlight: In the afternoon, as we descended from the high mountains to lower hills in Wyoming, it seemed that the CDT planners made sure that we crossed over the summit of every hill, even though they did not offer any significantly better views. It was tedious up and down on rocky trails across sage brush-covered hills.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were hiking by 6am on a milder morning than usual after periods of light rain overnight.
Our route for most of the day was to continue following the ridge of a range of mountains towards the north-west. After a steady climb on a 4WD track we reached just under 11000' on the shoulder of Bridger Peak and were above the treeline with great views.
We stayed above 10500' for another couple of hours crossing meadows and enjoying the views until we began a long descent towards the high plains of southern Wyoming. As we got lower, the vegetation changed completely and we ended up crossing a series of dry sage brush-covered hills (see above) before a final descent through scrubby overgrown trail to meet a road.
During the afternoon, we met a southbound hiker who remarked how quickly she had covered the Sage Creek Road Alternate south from Rawlins. Afterwards, as we were planning to take the same Alternate, we discussed her comment and decided that we could possibly make Rawlins by Saturday night instead of Sunday lunchtime as originally planned. The 58km Sage Creek Road Alternate into Rawlins, is the choice of most thruhikers, instead of the official CDT route. It was shorter and easier walking and passed through much of the same country.
We calculated that, if we walked late into the evening once we reached the Alternate, we could cut tomorrow's distance to Rawlins down to about 50km. Thus, we walked about 9km along Sage Creek Road through rolling treeless country, once we reached it around 6pm, and found a place to camp in a culvert beside the very quiet road around 8pm.
We just ate snacks for dinner so we could get to sleep at a reasonable hour and plan to get up early tomorrow for our big day.
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