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Day 46 (June 10, 2021)

Day 46 (June 10, 2021)

Shawn Bryan Jun 11th, 2021
Shawn Bryan's 2021 CDT Thru-Hike

789.4 to 801.6 (12.2 miles)

It was a nice campsite last night. Though high winds were expected, I was on the east side of a distinct ridge line that provided great protection. A pika bravely attempted to approach several times before sunset last night but always gave up.

I had to backtrack slightly to climb back up to the trail since it was on the side of the ridge line. I found the winds. Fortunately it was about 40 degrees and I hike hot so all I needed was my wind jacket. The trail continued to climb up to the top of Flat Top Mountain.

An unexpected sighting happened. Above tree line, I saw what appeared at first to be an odd colored rock for the area on the trail. When I got closer I realized it was not a rock but animal fur. I still couldn’t make out what it was. It hadn’t moved so I assumed it was dead and quickly stopped, looking for any predators nearby. Still unsure, I moved off the trail as I approached. I then saw the face and twinkling eyes of a newborn elk calf! I went for my phone, but he/she realized I was there and got up and walked off before I could get the picture. Still really neat. And don’t worry; just minutes later I saw mom nearby as well.

The rest of the day was not so great, as you might guess from the low mileage. Great views, but slow going. The problem was snow and snow melt. If I wasn’t slogging through slushy snow, I was mucking through mud and wet grass. Sometimes the trail was a small stream itself. The snow was not fun for several reasons. First, this is late season snow that has been melting and refreezing. It can have a hard outer crust which may-or-may-not support you. When it doesn’t, you punch through in what hikers call postholing. In areas where the snow was shallower, it turned mushy as the day went on. Extra energy and effort for a slower pace. Not fun.

The snow was not constant; it was in large fields with intervening rock fields or melted areas. It was also in large drifts on the trail on north facing slopes, especially in the trees. This presented the above snow challenges multiplied. Every drift was different, and usually on a slope. Even if they supported your weight, you had to crawl up on them.

And..... detailed navigation became a problem. The trail itself could not be seen for large sections. What to do? Follow the GPS, right? Maybe, maybe not. Previous hikers had left tracks in the snow that may not follow the GPS track, sometimes with good reason, sometimes not. For example, with a lot of snow, it was sometimes easier to go straight line between distant trail markers rather than follow the winding trail. Or a lead person in a group may have found a better way to get around a snow field and the rest follows. But sometimes the tracks seemed to be from semi-lost hikers. With the melt, portions of the trail could now be seen, so the tracks didn’t always make sense. The result was more pausing and studying the map to figure out where to go. And I quickly figured out I wanted to vary from the trail to avoid larger snow fields myself. At one point I found myself postholing so badly on a steep slope in the trees (voids form in the snow near trees) I couldn’t proceed. I had to turn around (no easy feat on a slope) and return to dry trail. From there I used the map to see that I could climb up a south facing (and thus snow free) slope to a ridge line and follow it to near where the trail would intercept. It worked, and from footprints, others had taken similar paths. More time, effort, and bonus mileage. Exhausting.

To add to my diminishing attitude, I started to realize it would be more difficult to find a dry suitable campsite. Wonderful.

In the late afternoon, the snow conditions at one point were not safe to follow where the trail obviously should be. I followed previous tracks hoping they had discovered the solution. They had; a glissade. A glissade is simply sliding on your backside down a slope. It is done to either avoid a long descent (not the case here) or because a walking descent would be too slippery to walk, which was my case. The glissade was short (about 75 feet) and the slope shallowed out at the end. I got out my ice axe to use as a braking mechanism. It was actually fun.

The only problem afterwards was how to get back to trail, since the deviation was significant to get to the glissade. A quick look at the map brought up the campsite problem. I could easily get back to the trail. But from my current vantage point I could see where the trail should go for the next two miles. It was mostly snow fields. OK, but that meant (probably) difficult campsite selection. I semi-panicked, probably because of my physical and mental exhaustion. Though normally too early to set up camp, I looked around and found a small, almost flat spot on the leeward side of some small trees. Good enough. I set up. But only 12.2 miles. Ouch. I had planned on 15 miles per day in this section. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Previous: Jun 10th, 2021
Next: Jun 12th, 2021

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