Month: June 2016

Me and Elusive were treated by my friends Nancy and Sandy McVie to a wonderful campground dinner feast here in Twin Lakes.  It made the hard five days of hiking well worth it.  It took Elusive and I five days to hike 70 miles, a section I thought I could cover in four days.  Each day included long ascents to beautiful mountain passes.  I do not time to write many details.  The photos will provide glimpses of the challenges and rewards.

Continue reading “CDT June 23-27: Monarch Pass to Twin Lakes, Colorado”

Summer finally arrived in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, with warm, even hot, days with clear skies (no thunderstorms for five straight days), and rapidly melting snowpack!  As Mr. Snowman says: “Oh no!  I’m melting…melting!”

Continue reading “CDT June 15-19: Creede to Monarch Pass”

I left Pagosa Springs on June 11 after two days of welcome zeros.  But I did not feel mentally ready to go back to the CDT, and instead wanted to stay another day in wonderful Pagosa Springs after taking care of town chores.  The result was an unsettled mind state.  And I believe this contributed to forgetting to pack my headlamp in my backpack.  I hiked just 4 miles on June 11, and that was all I could handle, and discovering I had no normal way to illuminate the dark night made my unsettled feeling even worse. 

Continue reading “CDT June 11-14, Wolf Creek Pass to Creede”