Day 079 - Continental Divide Trail - Bull Springs to Crooks Creek.

Day: 079

Date: Wednesday, 24 July 2024

Start:  Bull Springs 

Finish:  Crooks Creek 

Daily Kilometres:  38.4

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

Total Kilometres:  2307.6

Weather:  Hot and sunny

Accommodation:  Tent 

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts/ Muesli

  Lunch:  Snacks/Trail mix

  Dinner:  Chicken & rice

Aches:  Dave - the usual niggles plus a couple of sore toes; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  The water cache, maintained by a church group from a little hamlet about 15km from the trail, was a most welcome stop for breakfast.  They had even provided cushions for us to sit on while we drank and ate.

Lowlight:  Biting flies were a nuisance all day.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We woke at 5am, just as our four fellow thruhikers, who were camped nearby, departed.  They must have woken very early and packed very quietly.

We were packed and gone by soon after 6am on a day that was already warm.  By 7:30am we were hiking in shorts and T-shirts and expecting a hot day, which it turned out to be.

For many kilometres we followed, and could see stretching out far ahead, a 4WD track passing through arid treeless sagebrush country.  We stopped at a very welcome water cache for breakfast (see above) and continued gradually climbing to a ridge at 7500’, about 500’ higher than our starting point, before gradually descending a similar amount during the afternoon.

Our lunch stop was at a creek flowing out of a small dam near where a little-used dirt country road crossed the trail.  It was very hot and there was no shade.  While stopped, two Continental Divide mountain bikers came past, and a local in a pickup slowed to check that we were OK.

The afternoon was more of the same country though the trail became very sandy which made hiking harder and slower.

Soon after 6pm we reached the spring which was our target for the day and camped close by.  It was nice to have running water for a change and we both had a refreshing wash in the cold water after a hot sweaty day.