Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Day 100: The Winds

7/30: mile 1779.8-15.2 (Cirque alternate partway up climb to Texas Pass)
Miles: 19.6
Total trip miles: 1604.6

It was a cold night, and we got a late start stalling instead of packing. The trail was fun at first, really getting into the mountains, nothing much but the trees and the climbing were a good start.


Starting the day with wet feet

There's a really popular alternate through this section that takes you through the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range which are supposed to be one of the coolest sections of the CDT. So there wasn't really a question about taking the alternate. About 4 miles in we took the turn and started the follow the cairn and mostly visible trail game.














Climbing up towards the mountains was exciting, the first saddle much less so. We had a terrible time finding the trail up and the GPS tracks were off so it was just slow and hard. The climb down wasn't much better, very steep with more poor trail.











Mountain Spice gave up and just scooted partway down on her butt


By the time we got to Little Sandy Lake we were tired, cranky and I was hungry. I'm short on food this stretch and couldn't pick up extra because South Pass City simply doesn't sell any. We talked to some Boy Scouts while we ate a late lunch and as we were leaving I got some salami! What a treat. We had barely made any miles and I was stressing but nothing to do but keep going.

We accidentally took a purple route to Big Sandy Lake, this section the maps and the GPS have not been agreeing with each other which can get pretty frustrating.











The climb up to Jack Ass Pass got really hot and we were both struggling. We ended up taking a break and sitting in a lake to cool down. That helped and we met a southbound flip flopper who had seen a bunch of northbounders today which was fun gossip. Rest Stop still hasn't caught up which makes no sense with how slow we've been moving so I'm guessing we somehow to ink different routes and missed each other. Anyway it looks like it's going to be quite the crowd in Pinedale.





We had wanted to make it over Texas Pass but the map said cross country and the timing just looked too tight. So we got partway up and camped a bit early. But it's gorgeous, the cirque towering over us and a full moon isn't too shabby of a night.





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