Great Divide Highpoint

Day 51

Date: 21.06.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 1'071.2

Miles hiked: 10.7 miles / 17.1 km

Elevation: 2'083 feet ascent (Aufstieg 635 m) / 2'884 feet descent (Abstieg 879 m)

Camping at: 10'492 feet / 3'179 m

Last night I visited some trail friends I haven't seen since Grants. They stay at a different hotel in Salida, not far from us and since we have bikes I just drove there. It was nice meeting some trail friends I haven't seen for a while. I stayed much longer than I intended to and of course got to bed only late again!

Before we can hitch back to the trail, we have to go to the Post Office, which was closed yesterday due to a public holiday. I will get my new tent from Plusone and Dogbite and am quite excited about it! The K2's will pick up their resupply box they have pre-prepared at home and their family is sending them the resupply boxes to all the towns now. And Patches has ordered some things from Amazon. However, there is an issue with Patches order. As Amazon uses UPS, a private mail service rather than USPS, the US mail service, his box hasn't arrived yet and can only be picked up at 4pm this afternoon. That means hanging out all day again in Salida... I want to finally get back on trail after spending already 3 days in Salida. And the stuff Patches ordered from Amazon, he can buy also here in Salida. However, Amazon is first not willing to forward the box to the next town or to take the order back. What a mess! We are all not super happy but we decide to wait for Patches and only hike out in the evening then... But luckily Patches was able to talk to a person at Amazon and they finally agreed to take the order back and not charge anything. Good news! While Patches buys the items now at Walmart, we enjoy really good food at the mexican food truck. And just when we are ready to try to hitch, we receive a call from I guy we contacted yesterday. He does offer hitches for hikers back to the trail head and picked us up 2 minutes later. Awesome! It could have taken quite some time otherwise to get back to the trailhead.

Back on trail we hike through the Monarch Pass ski area. The sun is out and it is a nice hiking day. However, my Quesadilla from lunch is hurting my belly a lot. All that cheese made my stomach cramp and I had to take a longer break. We only plan to hike 10 miles today to a parking lot down at Boss Lake Reservoir (funny, because we have 'Boss' in our hiking group😁) but first we have to master quite a steep climb up to the great divide high point. This is not the high point of the CDT trail, but of the Great Divide Line. The views are amazing again. The landscape has changed back to real mountains and not only hills again. And thereafter follows a steep hike down to the lake. We met up with Piper and Duskman at the lake again. They left much earlier than we did, but had a while to get a hitch back to the trailhead and here we are all again! But the parking lot doesn't serve well as a camp ground. So we all hike on. Only half a mile further down the trail we find a flatish spot and decide to call it a day. Piper, Duskman and Ducky, whom I met for the first time today, are ahead still hiking on.