Into the Wind River Range

Day 87

Date: 27.07.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 1'758.1

Miles hiked: 24.7 miles / 39.5 km

Elevation: 4'675 feet ascent (1'425.9 m Aufstieg) / 3'422 feet descent (Abstieg 1'043.7 m)

Camping at: 9'567 feet / 2'918 m

We slept in, meaning our alarms went off at 6am (not 5am or earlier as in the San Juan's!) and we finally started moving at 7.15am. I like this rhythm now, also as it is not dark nor cold when getting up. I make my hot double coffee with Swisss Miss chocolate, which tastes really super yummy and does help getting up and have a bakery donut for breakfast. Not the worst I would say! However, this takes a little more time than what I used to do. So Vista is up and ready to hit the trail before me! What a novelty! She leaves 15 minutes before me, but I catch up with her within 30 minutes. I hike on and we agree to meet up the trail. We are still in the transition zone, sometimes walking through pine forest, then again through sagebrushes. Most of the pine trees sections are blowdowns from 2020, but luckily mostly cleared. Reading comments from last years hiker I am super happy about the fantastic trail maintenance here. It took them more than 12 hours to hike 15 miles through those really bad blowdown sections! We could just hike it mostly on a nicely prepared trail.

At a picnic area 9 miles later Vista meets up with me again. There are pit toilets and a dumpster! Even though it has only been less than 1 day, I love getting rid of my garbage. And the burger was wrapped in a huge tin foil. We took a break and eat some snacks before we moved on again. 7 miles later we reached the junction to the Cirque of the tower alternate, a very beautiful section of the Winds. However, the official CDT route wouldn't lead through here, so we have decided to do this extra loop of about 21 miles, with extra hight meters but stunning views, and reconnect with the official CDT later again. But the first few miles of the alternate are still covered with blowdowns, which have not been cleared yet. Hence, we don't hike to the official junction, but bushwalk a little before that, as previous hikers have recommended us to do. There are cairns which we can follow and it is actually quite funny looking for the cairns and make your own trail otherwise. But it takes more time and effort than just following a trail. We stop at 1.30pm for lunch, not having hiked that many miles as we wished we would have. When we finally reconnect with the trail of the alternate, there are still some blowdowns the first few miles. But you can walk around them, however some of the walk-arounds are super steep uphills. After lunch I am often tired and my legs feel like pudding. It is also very hot. Sun's out and no wind or clouds. I am sweating like hell! And hence drink a lot too! It feels we hardly make progress. But the landscape is dope already. We have definitely left the desert behind us. And finally the blowdowns are gone, the trail is more mellow, as we hike along the valley, following a river. And the views are fantastic. I love it here. Some of the peaks, which are very pointy, remind me back home to the 'Sidelenhütte', were some rocks look like camels. This has been the nicest I have seen so far on trail and we just entered the Winds. And there is water everywhere! We actually planned to climb a saddle, cook dinner thereafter and take another alternate than the one we are already on, to another valley where we wanted to camp, at deep lake, which must be epic. But the blowdowns and the hot weather have slowed us down more than we thought. We decided to camp at the lake just before the big climb up the saddle. It is anyways easier to do big climbs in the morning than late in the evening and it was already after 6pm. And there seems to be no official trail up there, more than 700 feet climb in 0.7 miles, it is gonna be a hard one, mainly straight uphills. However, the lake is only 0.5 miles away and we should cook and eat dinner about 2 miles away from camping. So we stopped right there (0.5 miles is still better than straight at camp!) And cooked our dinner, as suddenly clouds moved in and some big drops fell on us. We put on our raingear and watched the weather. We seem to be lucky, only a couple of these big drops reach us, before the sun is coming back out. Thanks god, I would have hated it to eat dinner in the rain and not to be able to get into your tent for shelter! Putting on our raingear was anyways a good thing, cause we are surrounded by mosquito's looking for our blood! The trail seems to have disappeared so we just climb the last hill up to the lake. It is absolutely beautiful up here and there is a lot of flat ground to pitch our tents. It's shortly after 7pm, still early. We possibly could have hiked on today, over the saddle and camped on the other side. But it has been a big day with a lot of climbs and being up in slightly higher altitude again, I am totally fine with our decision to set camp here. We are trying to hike out a little earlier tomorrow, let's see!😁

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