Day: 084
Date: Monday, 29 July 2024
Start: East Sweetwater River
Finish: East Fork Squaw Creek
Daily Kilometres: 33.3
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2473.7
Weather: Very cold morning then warm, hazy and sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/ Muesli
Lunch: Snacks/Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - lots of niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: The views on the steep descent towards Little Sandy Lake which was backed by towering rocky peaks - Wind River Peak, Independent Mountain, Mt Nystrom - was spectacular and exceptional.
Lowlight: Late in the day, when the track was often barely discernible, we missed a turn and unhappily wasted half an hour.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We slept in. Having stayed awake until 10pm last night reading all of the hiker comments about the upcoming Cirque of the Towers Alternate option to the CDT, when the alarm went at 5am and it was bitterly cold outside, we opted to roll over and sleep for another hour. Our justification was that having decided not to take the Alternate, the turnoff for which we would reach in mid-afternoon, we would save at least an hour over the next two days.
The reason we decided not to take the Alternate, which is apparently a scenically spectacular 33km, was that it would involve some very steep climbs over some mountain passes on sketchy trail, and Dave was not keen.
Anyway, it was 7am by the time we started hiking on what was a very cold morning. Within an hour, it was warm enough to strip down to shorts and T-shirts as the sun rose in a hazy sky.
Initially, the CDT continued to traverse the foothills of the Wind River Range, going up over spurs and dropping down to creeks through a mix of conifer forest and open sagebrush country though, as we gradually worked higher, the sagebrush was replaced by grassy meadows. There were also plenty of attractive rocky outcrops and boulder fields. The hiking was pleasant, but slow, on technical trail with plenty of blown down trees to negotiate.
After passing through a National Forests campground offering welcome toilets and trash receptacles, we began to climb steadily and occasionally steeply up to a saddle at 10300’. Along the way we stopped under some pines in a meadow for lunch and saw a moose cross in the distance.
The descent from the saddle revealed some truly spectacular mountain scenery (see above), though the trail was steep and technical. We passed the junction where the Alternate route left the CDT in mid-afternoon and it seemed almost immediately that the CDT deteriorated significantly. It was hard to follow and crossed many blowdowns. At one point, we annoyingly missed a turn, costing us half an hour. Even after that, when we were being extra careful, we still lost the trail several times on the rocky forested terrain.
Now that we are in grizzly country, when you are not supposed to cook where you camp, we are having our evening meal at our last break for the day in the late afternoon. We are also each carrying bear spray on a readily accessible front pocket on our rucksack shoulder straps.
Around 7:30pm, we found a tent site beside the trail and were in bed by 8:30pm, not having travelled as far as hoped today. No sleeping in tomorrow!
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