Day 091 - Continental Divide Trail - Green River Lake Campground to Union Pass Road

Day: 091

Date: Monday, 05 August 2024

Start:  Green River Lake Campground

Finish:  Union Pass Road

Daily Kilometres:  38.1

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

Total Kilometres:  2668.2

Weather:  Cold early then mostly warm and sunny, with a couple of wintry squalls late in the day.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts/Muesli

  Lunch:  Snacks/Trail mix

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals

Aches:  Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  Nothing in particular.

Lowlight:  Just as we were preparing dinner a cold squall with rain and strong winds came through, making things very unpleasant.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

After some messing around, we didn't start hiking until 6:30am on another very cold morning.  There was fog hanging over the Green River as we followed the CDT steadily away from the river and up over 2000’ over 12 kilometres to Gunsight Pass (10135’) through mostly open country.  The jagged peaks of the Wind River Range were visible in the distance behind us, but the countryside had changed to more rounded hills and open grazing land bordered by pine forests.

After the Pass, we descended a little through the open range and then across sagebrush and grassland at around 9000’ on easy trail.  During our lunch break a SOBO (southbound) CDT hiker, a young civil engineer from San Francisco and the first person we had seen all day, stopped to join us and we had a good chat, picking each other's brains about what lies ahead.  He confirmed that the CDT was closed ahead because of a wildfire, as we expected, and offered some advice about the best way to get around it, including a short-cut we didn't know about.

We continued across the open range after lunch, reaching Union Pass Road, the point at which the CDT was closed, around 4pm.  There was some wildfire smoke visible ahead and Dave later heard on the radio that the fire had grown significantly and burned across the CDT trail, meaning it will be closed for some time.

We turned north along the road and walked another 10km, stopping to cook dinner along the way on a squally evening.  The fire detour and the recommended short-cut, plus some time we have gained since Pinedale, means that we will get to Dubois, our next town, tomorrow night, a day earlier than expected, so once we camped in the woods beside the road, Dave logged onto the internet and changed our bookings.