Day: 121
Date: Wednesday, 04 September 2024
Start: Hell Roaring Creek
Finish: Pintler Pass
Daily Kilometres: 36.7
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 3510.5
Weather: Cold early then mild and mostly sunny.
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: Blowdowns (fallen trees) seemed neverending today. There was one period of about two hours in the morning when we had to climb over or find our way around a tree, or multiple trees tangled together, about every 50 metres. Most had sharp stubs where branches had broken off that were keen to draw the blood or snag the clothes of unfortunate hikers. It was exhausting and time-consuming.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were hiking by soon after 6:30am on a cold and clear morning. For the first hour or so, we hiked along lovely trail through old growth pine forest, but then things went downhill, literally. We came to the edge of the ridge we had been following and looked down and out over a huge burnt area where, though many dead trees were still standing forlornly, many more lay like a giant’s scattered matchsticks across the slopes of the valley. Our trail descended through this chaotic landscape and soon we were negotiating blowdown after blowdown (see above). It was slow and frustrating and not particularly scenic.
Although there were fewer blowdowns later on, they remained a feature of the day, even when we passed through unburnt forest, as we did for the last few hours of the day.
It was also a day of hills as we oscillated between 7000’ and 9000’, climbing a total of more than 5000’ and descending a similar amount. There were good views from the higher elevations, but so much of what could be seen was, sadly, burnt forest.
The same young northbound CDT hiking couple who passed us at lunchtime yesterday, passed us again today while we were having lunch. We had thought they would be miles ahead of us by now. However, they had apparently stopped early yesterday because of the cold wet weather. We had noticed how small packs they were carrying seemed and wondered whether that might mean they had insufficient warm clothing to deal with the colder weather.
We finished the day with a solid climb through peaceful pine forest up to Pintler Pass (8736’) as the sun set which was beautiful. At the Pass, we found a campsite amongst a few trees around 8:15pm and quickly set up the tent and went to bed.
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