Day: 131
Date: Saturday, 14 September 2024
Start: Canyon Creek
Finish: East Fork Falls Creek
Daily Kilometres: 35.5
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 3836.8
Weather: Cold all day with a strong wind and partly sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Snacks/Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported
Highlight: About when we wanted to have a lunch break, after labouring in the very cold wind all morning (see below), we reached a yurt (hut) that was open for hikers and provided excellent shelter, complete with chairs and a table. Ideal for lunch. It was set up with stretchers, solar power, a gas stove and fire, so would have been good for camping.
Lowlight: The wind today was relentless, strong and cold from about an hour after we started hiking until the evening. Since, for much of the day, we were on treeless ridges and mountains, we were very exposed. The constant roar in our ears and buffeting as it caught our packs and clothing was very tedious.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 5:30am to find out tent very wet with condensation from a cold damp night. The surrounding vegetation was covered in frost. Maybe for that reason, we were slower to get going and didn't start hiking until 6:45am under cloudy skies. Before long a cold strong wind arrived and stayed with us for most of the day. We were wearing many layers to keep warm.
Last evening we had worked out that, because our roadwalk yesterday to get around the CDT wildfire closure had shaved some distance from the kilometres to our next resupply at Augusta, we might actually be able to get there in three more days rather than the planned four. It would mean three long days, but would give us two days off in Augusta instead of one.
At our breakfast break, where we had internet reception, Dave lined up the extra night in the motel (got the last room), and arranged a shuttle pickup from the remote Benchmark trailhead. It's a long story but finding a shuttle driver was not easy and the latest they can pick us up on Monday is 5pm. This means that Monday will have to be a shorter hiking day and, therefore, today and Sunday would have to be big days.
This seemed like a good plan at the time but, as the day passed with us being buffeted by the wind (see above) and the ascents becoming more challenging, we began to second-guess our decision.
Despite the wind and climbs, it was actually a great day scenery-wise. The smoke haze was gone and we were above the treeline most of the time following the spine of the Continental Divide, giving us superb views of mountain ranges and valleys and far distant plains. We could see far behind from whence we had come and far ahead to where we were going.
However, the steep ascents and descents, more than +/- 5000’ in total, kept our (Dave's) pace slow and we didn't get as far as we would have liked.
Around 8pm, as it got dark, we found a partly protected sloping tent site in a saddle and set up camp. Looks like being an early start tomorrow if we are to do the necessary kilometres to meet our shuttle on Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment