Day 080 - Continental Divide Trail - Crooks Creek to Bison Basin Road

Day: 080

Date: Thursday, 25 July 2024

Start:  Crooks Creek 

Finish:  Bison Basin Road

Daily Kilometres:  44.1

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

Total Kilometres:  2351.7

Weather:  Warm with hazy sunshine in the morning, overcast with a strong warm wind in the afternoon and a brief shower.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts/Muesli

  Lunch:  Snacks/Trail mix 

  Dinner:  Tuna/Chicken & rice

Aches:  Dave - the usual niggles plus sore toes and shoulder chafing; Julie - sore toes.

Highlight:  Nothing in particular.

Lowlight:  After a long day, missing a turn with 5km to go, and wasting about 15 minutes.  Not a lot in the scheme of things, but frustrating at the time.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We were hiking by soon after 6am in the knowledge that we had a long day ahead of us.  To reach water to camp for tonight we needed to cover 43km+, as there were no water sources after about 22km.

It promised to be a warm day, with quite a lot of heat in the sun by 7:30am but, as the day wore on, a haze developed which grew into cloud cover and it wasn't as bad as feared, but still thirsty work.  However, it did become very windy and we were battling into an unpleasant strong warm headwind for most of the afternoon.

Although we were continuing to cross the Great Divide Basin, after few kilometres,  we began climbing a mountain range that even had a few trees on it, getting up to about 8000’.  Mostly, however, the vegetation remained sage brush or tussocky grass, and treeless.  At the top of the climb, we remained high for many kilometres with good views from the bare ridges down to the plain below, from whence we came.

Although we dipped down into some valleys, we did stay high until near the end of the day, even catching some glimpses of the jagged Wind River Range where we will be in three or four days time.

The last hour saw us lose significant elevation until we reached our target trailhead at 7000’, soon after 7:30pm, where there is a very welcome water cache and we camped nearby.  Dave was very tired and sore.