August 8, 2018

Daily totals: miles 14.4 and 3,577 ft of elevation gain

We woke this morning at 6:30 and had calls from what we think were wolves celebrating a kill as we had our morning coffee. We both thought this could be a good omen for what laid ahead. Well as the day went on there really wasn’t a ton of excitement so this post may be a little briefer than the previous days.

My legs were definitely feeling it from the two previous days so Amy took the lead more and I could go into what we call a hiker’s trance. Basically you become a zombie and just place one foot in front of the other and not thinking about the path but just following the person in front. The morning was great with a gradual downhill to Texas Creek. We cruised the 3 miles in about an hour. We didn’t need water but Amy had a few things to wash out. It wasn’t a huge Creek but still pretty.

After rock hopping across the creek we headed down the trail until we came across the largest poop we have ever seen. This thing took up almost the whole width of the trail. I looked at Amy and said “I’m not sure I want to see the thing that this came out of!”. This couldn’t be called scat right? This was the largest pile of dung either of had come across. Now what was even crazier is that we saw about 30-40 more of these over the next three miles. We assume it was moose due to the size of hoof prints we saw along with it. They also seemed to like to smear it down the trail like this would mark their territory. Here is a picture of it next to Amy’s size 9 shoe.

While climbing one of the many hills today. I heard a very distinct sound of a motorcycle charging up the hill behind us. Amy and I couldn’t believe this. As it was getting closer both of us were playing the conversation in our heads of what we would say when these guys got to us. Amy looked like she was about to stick her hiking pole in a place these guys didn’t want it to go. As they got to us they shut off their bikes and exclaimed “I can’t believe someone is out here hiking this trail, it’s hard enough for us”. I then tried to calmly ask what he was doing on a trail not intended for motorcycles? They then politely pulled out a map showing it was a trail for off road ATVs. He even knew they weren’t allowed on the CDT. Further investigation into this we found out that this section of the CT and CDT allows motorcycles. Now we felt bad about the things we wanted to do to them.

The afternoon was through the forest on a dusty rock filled trail with no views. Until we hit the trail for Lake AnnPass. We gained about 1,900 feet in two miles. Literally some of the sections we were climbing up a 50-60% grade. We made it to the top around 4ish. If it weren’t for the fires in Colorado the view could have been spectacular. Instead it was a lot of smoke and haze. We made it to Lake Ann at 4:30 and found a descent campsite. Dark clouds are rolling in and we hear thunder in the distance so it might be a wet one tonight. It is definitely windy and much cooler than last night. I can’t believe tomorrow is our last full day.

Brian