In the eye of the storm!

Day 88

Date: 28.07.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 1'771.9

Miles hiked: 15.5 miles / 24.8 km

Elevation: 3'717 feet ascent (1'134 m Aufstieg) / 4'554 feet descent (Abstieg 1'389 m)

Camping at: 10'013 feet / 3'054 m

It was super windy last night, but my tent did well. However, I was pretty cold and it took me a long time to warm up and fall asleep. The wind stopped during the night and my tent and sleepingbag were pretty wet/damp from all the condensation in the morning. We will have to dry it out during the day.

Getting up earlier as planned last night didn't work either🙈 we were back on trail at 7.15am again. And our day started with a steep climb up the temple saddle, where first there was no trail, so we just climbed straight uphills. More than 700 feet in 0.7 miles (+214m in 1.12 km). But we did great after the recovering night and the views were stunning! The mountains are made up from straight wall, trying to reach the sky it seems. It's stunning! And down the valley was a gorgeous lake. The downhill lead us through big boulders and was pretty steep too. We had to navigate several times with our app to find the trail. Down at the lake we climbed a little up, which was our luck. There were tons of mosquito's down there and one had to run through that section! When suddenly I hear a noise close by, I turn around and see the K2's just getting ready to move too! I knew they were a little ahead of us, but didn't think we will catch up with them. They also struggled with the hike yesterday (slowdowns, steep uphills) and only hiked 17 miles, while we did nearly 25 miles that day. Together we hike on. Both of us want to do the deep lake circle, which is only about 1 mile longer but absolutely worth it. The views are epic! The sun is out, it's getting hot and we break and make pictures and take our time to enjoy. This has been the most beautiful stretch along the CDT so far and I really don't wanna rush through here. It's simply min blowing. Also the trail is often non existent and we use quite some time to navigate. We meet many non CDT hikers as there is a trailhead not too far away. I have never seen so many non CDT hikers as today, it was crowded!

Rejoining back with the Alternate we have to climb another pass. It is a steep uphill, often over big boulders and very hot, my shirt is soon very sweaty. Little before the pass we break for lunch. We can see big dark clouds rolling in and we want to eat lunch before it rains on us. Also, it is already 12.30pm. We have not even hiked 10 miles today, I think I have never been so slow! But all these beautiful views, talking to the other hikers, the steep uphills, the navigation to find the trail and Vista needs a little longer for the boulder's, it have just has been very time intense. It bugs me a little, we will never be able to hike 25 miles today! We eat lunch very fast and within 30 minutes we are back on trail. I talked to a vacation hiker and he informed us that rain and thunder are forecasted for an hour in the afternoon, and maybe tomorrow morning but thereafter the weather should be very nice again. It looks like we are lucky, as the dark clouds are passing us. We climb the pass. The views from up here are insane, it is getting more and more beautiful and I can't help myself stopping and taking pictures and just sucking up the views.

Once over and down the pass we get ready for the last pass of this Alternate, Texas pass. A very steep but rather short climb, 1'269 feet in 1 mile = 1'363.7 ft/mi (387m in 1.6km ). I am glad now that the sun is not out, I am already hot without sun! However, climbing up the pass the sky is getting covered with dark grey clouds. Only 0.2 miles before reaching the pass it starts to rain a little and we can hear thunder, but not see any lightening yet. I look around and find a big boulder, a little overhanging, not far from us. I don't feel we should cross the pass and ask Vista to wait out 5 minutes. She is fine with it and just as we reach the boulder it starts to hail on us. They hurt a lot! Both of us squeeze tightly to the boulder, holding my sitting pad above our heads to not get hurt by the hail. Luckily we put on our rain jacket already, but sadly not the rainpants yet. At first it is an adventure, we can hardly believe it and thought it will be gone within the next couple of minutes. But instead it becomes worse and worse. We are in the eye of the storm, hail, thunder and lightening right above us. I shiver badly, having hail all over my bare legs. But there isn't much we can do. They hurt a lot once the sitting pad is not covering your head. The ground is soon covered with white hail and the little streams are growing, till they run over and new streams are being created. Finally, I have no clue how much time passed, the hail stopped. I am super cold and a little worried about hypothermia. I put on my rain pants too and am barley able to get my cooker out and make a hot chocolate with coffee. But I feel it is very important to have a hot drink to warm you up from the inside and to hold the hot cup in your hands, to warm up our fingers. I share it with Vista, who is also super cold. But the clouds haven't really moved yet and we are bareley able to finish the hot chocolate, as the hail and also thunder with lightening right above us starts again. Really? Again we crawl as close to the rock as we can, hold the sitting pad above our heads and I also get the tyvek out to cover our bodies. Later we hear the whole spectacle took about 2 hours! It was long and did feel very long too! Once the lightening was over, only thunder and rain left, we decided to take the risk and climb the pass. It is either that or return down the valley and stay there for the day. Everything is covered in hail and water is coming down in little stream everywhere. Out shoes are wet within a second, my feet very cold. How can the weather change from very hot to that cold so fast? I wish the Great Divide Basin back, where it was hot and dry! We climb over the pass and traverse a snow field before we start to descend. The descent is even steeper, now that all is hail covered we can't see any trail and it consists of rocks only. I go ahead and Vista follows me. She is from Missouri and not really used to snow, so it takes us a while to get down to the bottom of the pass. But better slow and safe. Also down here everything is covered in hail and the trail is, if there is a trail!, often flooded badly. It has stopped raining though once we passed the Pass. And when the sun came back half an hour later, we took a break to take off and dry our raingear and tyvek. But I just manage to get my pants off, as it starts to rain again, even though the sun is still out. The rain picks up and the sun eventually is not there anymore. Well, that didn't work out very well. Even though it only rains a couple of minutes, the sun never came back that day. But the 5 minutes the sun was out were great. I warmed up again, just to get cold later again... our goal of today is now to reach the reconnection with the official CDT and to leave the Cirque of the Towers alternate behind us. By 7 pm, feeling exhausted, tired, cold and hungry, we reach that point finally. We didn't dry out our gear today, so we have to pitch our wet tents and hope they dry out a little while we cook dinner. Well, our 25 miles daily goal shrinked down to 15 miles today. And we think that the K2's are far behind us and never made it over the pass today. We still have 60 miles (96 km) and about 10'000 feet (3'050 m) in elevation to climb left before reaching green lakes, from where we hope to get a hitch into Pinedale. We hoped to hike 25 miles minimum daily, to be there by saturday. That's definitely not gonna happen anymore.

Also, we have noticed today that bareley anyone is caring a bear spray or cooking food away from camp. Being that exhausted after today we have also decided to not hang our food. Again, there are not really any hanging trees around. I put most of my smelly products in an Opsack (smellproof) and a bear bag and have them with me in my tent. We cooked dinner a little away from our tents, surrounded by hundreds of mosquito's, still wearing our rain gear and also the bug head net for protection. What a fun dinner! I really hope we don't have any rain tomorrow, but a lot of sun and I am ok with some nice and friendly white clouds😁 I also hope - as exhausted as I am - I just fall asleep within a minute and not be cold at night, feeling fully recovered and ready for another beautiful hiking day tomorrow. This day started absolutely fantastic, gave us epic views but then with the hail storm I am just happy to crawl into my tent and hopefully warm up soon. Amen.

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