Frozen morning!

Day 132

Date: 10.09.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 2'743.8

Miles hiked: 25.6 miles / 40.1 km

Elevation: 3'140 feet ascent (957.7 m Aufstieg) / 3'396 feet descent (Abstieg 1'035.8 m)

Camping at: Wagon West Motel and RV Park, Augusta

The alarm woke me up at 5.30am, but everything was frozen! The tent inside was super frozen from the condensation, my sleepingbag was very moist, my backpack and shoes outside my tent were frozen. It was a very cold night and still a very chilly morning. I definitely wasn't getting up yet! 45 minutes later I finally got moving slowly. We hit the trail by 7.30am, not really early but it was simply too cold to get up earlier. Also, it takes more time if it is that cold in the morning. Just to change into your hiking clothes is a big challenge!

We hike out just as 'Dragon', a hiker we met last night, was passing. Together we hiked on for little while. The sky was blue and it looks like it's gonna be a great and warm day of hiking today. No snow or rain forecasted for today. Also, it is a easy day of hiking today, what a nice change from the past couple of days! Only one moderate climb and the rest is mostly flat or downhill. We stop for lunch at a river crossings after more than 15 miles of hiking and use the sun to dry out our gear. Taking out the tent, we found a snowball the size of two hands inside the tent from the condensation! Also, the CDT is closed here due to wildfires as of here. We have to take an alternate route, which however is in our favour. The trail is 4 miles shorter, bypasses a steep climb and leads along a beautiful river valley. Hiking along the trail we encounter big animal footprints. They are nearly the size of my hand. It could have been a wolf, but it rather looks like the footprints of a very big mountain lion. He must have passed this trail not that much ahead of us. We run down the trail and by 4.30pm we reach the dirt road at Benchmark which leads down to Augusta. Reaching the road, a forest Service car drives by, followed by another car, loaded with hikers. This is Frank, a local guy who offers shuttles from and to the trailhead. In the car there is Katka and Petr, Fuego, Masterchef and Gmac. Frank tells us to quickly hop in and drives the group up the trailhead. He is worried about the forest service, we don't quite understand why but apparently they don't like it that he offers shuttles and is being paid by us for doing so. He charges 20 USD per person and rid. This is quite a lot, but it is also a long drive on a dirt road into town, so I guess the price is fair. Frank wants us to drive with him obviously, but he has to wait for another group to be picked up in about 1 to 2 hrs. We don't really wanna wait that long here, there is nothing to do. We rather wanna get as soon as possible to town, do laundry, get food, shower, etc. Frank keeps us in his car for about 45 minutes before we can 'escape' and just as he was OK with letting us try to hitch another car pulls over with hikers. We can just swap the car and get a hitch in town. Turns out our driver is the son of the only Hotel in town. Augusta is a very small town with a population of about 350 people. It has one Motel and 4 bars/restaurants. We get a room and ask for our boxes to be picked up. We called the Post Office on Friday from trail and asked them to hand out our boxes to the Motel, as we will arrive too late to town to pick them up on Saturday. The Post Office closes at noon on Saturdays and is closed on Sundays. Then we also called the Motel and informed them about the boxes (6 in total, 1 food box, my 2 bounce boxes, 1 parcel with my new fanny pack, 1 box with new socks for Soccermum and another box with warmer clothes for him). They confirmed to pick up the boxes, but then when we got there, no boxes are here! They didn't pick them up, even though they were there since Tuesday and they officially allow hikers to send boxes here. This is very annoying. The owners of the Hotel are at a wedding today and hence we hope to get the boxes latest tomorrow morning.

Well at least we have a room, but before showering we go and get food. Too hungry we can't wait any longer 😁 we order a full table of food and manage to clear it all. The group we were supposed to wait for at the trailhead is here too: Stallion, Sour patch, Mutant, Dragon and Blueberry. Soccermom and I hiked out of Helena as the last persons, but got into town as the first, we really crushed the trail! Piper, Duskman, Cheetah, Mouse andF Captain will only get here tomorrow afternoon.

Just as we are about to leave and head back to the Motel, we run into Kingo and Grit and get talked into another glas of wine. One for the road then! Again, I must have eaten too much or too fast, but I have belly pain all night long...

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