Another nice but tough day on trail

Day 109

Date: 18.08.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 2'186.5

Miles hiked: 24.9 miles / 39.8 km

Elevations: 4'183 feet ascent (1'275.8 m Aufstieg) / 5'131 feet descent (Abstieg 1'565 m)

Camping at: 7'556 feet / 2'304.6 m

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise. The sun was very red and the sky orange, whereas the mountains seemed purple. The night was warm, a perfect night to cowboy camp. I slept very well. The first 4.5 miles today were mostly gentle downhills in forests before we started climbing. But also the climbs were mostly gentle. So we made good progress. When we stopped for our second breakfast at around 9.30am, we already hiked 8 miles. Much more compared to yesterday. However, today is much easier too. We plan on hiking 25 Miles today. As we stop for lunch at 1pm, we had left the forest behind us after the second breakfast break, we hiked 15.2 miles already! Again we had to descend a very steep hill off trail to get to water, and then obviously climb it back up. Still we made fantastic progress this morning. Amazing, that's how I like it. I felt very good this morning, walking far ahead of the group. My belly muscle still hurts, but far away from the pain I had a week ago. My right upper leg however still hurts. I guess this will take longer to heal, as I use this muscle much more. Captain and I did a long stretching session last night and I feel that helped a little. It just takes so much time to stretch...

After lunch however I struggle. We start of with a very steep, but not that long (0.6 miles) uphill climb. Normally I can follow Captain easily. But now I struggle. After 4 miles I quickly have to stop and break. My backpack feels extremely heavy, my back, shoulders, hips and my leg hurt and I am tired. I normally feel the most tired after lunch, so that's nothing new. But in general we all feel tired and could sleep for days - called hiker fatigueness. We are on trail now for so long, the last days we hiked many miles, climbed many steep uphills and battled the weather without taking a day off or rest in town, and we all feel that our bodies have reached their peak performance a while ago. Everybody has some issues and some pain.

After 5 miles since lunch we reach a nice lake. As per our app, there is a shortcut from the CDT, where we hike about 4.5 miles less than the official route. We could have taken an alternate already yesterday, but didn't wanted to miss the ridge line walk and its beautiful views. This time thought we could take the alternate. That could bring us to the village of Leadore already by saturday and we could take a much needed zero there, as we have to wait for the post office on Monday anyways. The others have send themselves food resupply boxes again, which they prepared ahead of time. We all feel that a day off trail would be good to recover. So we take this alternate. It was a very steep climb for 1 mile, before the dirt roads gently descended into a valley. We planned to hike a couple of more miles, but once reaching the valley, all of us are kinda done for today. It's 6pm, we have to get water and cook dinner. If we hurry we could be back on trail by 7pm, and hike for another hour, not knowing about campsites though. But down here we have the perfect flat camp site and a river. Easy decision. We pitch our tents, I go for a dip in the cold but refreshing river, we do hiker laundry (washing socks etc in the river) and have no hurry with cooking dinner and I even have time for some stretching. Much better than having no time to eat and then pitching tents late! Sometimes you have to stop early if there is a nice campsite, rather than keep on hiking on not finding a good spot...

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