Miles Hiked: 25.3
Total Milage: 1327.3
Location: Cochetopa Creek
This morning 12 pack and I woke up at 5am. For once, I woke up and my tent was dry! I felt like I didn’t sleep well last night or the night before and I really didn’t want to start hiking. We ended up being on trail around 5:45am. About one miles in to the day, we saw a car up ahead. 12 pack and I always make jokes about getting trail magic. This morning 12 pack said “can you imagine if they had hot coffee just waiting there for us?”. When we got closer to the car, two people were about and moving. When they saw us, they said “We are just getting started on making the coffee, come on over!” I couldn’t believe my ears. We walked over to the vehicles and met the owners of the nice gesture. Patches and Craig hiked the Colorado Trail last year and decided to come do trail magic here because they knew it was a tough spot to get water. I was so freaking happy. While they made some coffee they let us get some clean water, get rid of our trash, set up chairs, and offered us snacks including candy bars, chips, soda, doughnuts, and fresh fruit! I ended up eating a doughnut, a butterfinger, and a banana. After they made the coffee and Orange juice they started to hear up some breakfast burritos! I was anxious to get miles in since I woke up so early but I will never pass up a chance to enjoy some trail magic on the CDT. This is the 3rd time in 1300 miles that someone has exclusively gone out of their way to spend a whole day feeding and hanging out with hikers!The burritos we had were the small ones you can buy in a 12 pack at Walmart but they tasted AMAZING on the trail. They ended up giving me a burrito and a Mountain Dew to go!
We hiked away from the trail magic around 7am. We walked on a road for about 18 miles today! I could not believe it. I haven’t had a road walk this long in the whole state of Colorado! I honestly enjoyed it so much. The grade was so gradual and I felt so relaxed. I haven’t had a day this easy and calm in such a long time! Some of the dirt road went through Aspen trees which were very pretty. I stopped to take pictures of the wildflowers all day. 12 pack and I stopped for lunch around noon. I ate my second breakfast burrito and mountain dew and it was great. 12 pack lost his burrito somewhere on the road walk and it was really sad. He didn’t noticed until he say down for lunch. Right before lunch I found a mini license plate on the ground! I was so excited, I think I’ll end up carrying it to Canada!
After lunch, we eventually hit a trail again. We passed a NOBO CDT hiker named Strider. I think he is most likely the last one we will see. There was a couple fly fishing on the river that the trail walks along side, 12 pack and I stopped to watch them for a little bit before continuing to the eddysville trailhead. The trail ascended very gradually up a valley following the river the whole time. The closer we got to Eddysville the worse the thunderheads in the sky looked and sounded. It started raining right as we hit the parking lot. 12 pack and I hung out in the extremely clean pit toilet waiting for the rain to pass. Two CT hikers named Steve and Amanda caught up to us there and we talked to them for a little bit while waiting for the rain to go away. After about 30 minutes it stopped and 12 pack and I decided to keep hiking another 4 miles to camp. On the way to camp, it rained on us a lot. I was just glad we started to move again before we got soaked so at least I was warm while I was walking. When we set up camp it was still raining but I was so glad to be down for the day. It was just after 5pm.
For dinner I made some mashed potatoes and a hot chai tea latte. I fell asleep very quickly around 8pm.
Happy Trails!
-Early Bird
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