Day 91: NO RAIN

Miles Hiked: 25.1

Total Milage: 1517.1

This morning we all woke up around 5:30am and started hiking around 6:20am. We were completely exposed almost the entire day. I made sure to keep reapplying sunscreen to my nose because I tend to forget after noon. We got SO LUCKY today! It was the first day I can remember in a really long time where it didn’t storm or rain and it didn’t threaten to storm or rain either! It was a perfect day and we were so lucky because of how much we were not around trees or any sort of cover at all.

We started the morning by contouring around some mountains through beautiful and slightly rocky alpine meadow terrain. There was one small patch of snow we had to cross that was slightly sketchy but it was only about 15-30 feet across so it wasn’t bad. We passed a couple other CDT hikers going Northbound including an older lady named Force Ninja, a couple called the Noodle Heads, and Pro. For most of the day we would do a big climb up to the top of a pass, contour down and around a valley before going up another pass on repeat. The mountains were absolutely incredible and it’s hard to capture their beauty in words, photographs, or video.

Near the end of the day we took a break at Blue Lake. It was a large alpine lake that was truly very blue. We could see brook trout swimming around the lake clear as day. 12 pack is a fly fisherman but he didn’t have a rod with him. He attempted to catch a fish with his trekking pole, a line made out of dental floss and a fly he picked up in Pagosa springs. The fish came up to bite the fly but realized it was attached to a line because the dental floss was so white. It quickly swam away. After an hour or so of enjoying the lake, we did a gentle climb up to camp. We passed by many more much smaller alpine lakes along the way. We arrived at camp around 7:30pm. I enjoyed a great sunset and company from my hiking companions. I am glad to almost be done with Colorado but I’m enjoying this one last night in the San Juans!