Leadville!

Day 56

Date: 26.06.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 1'177.7

Miles hiked: 21.5 miles / 34.4 km

Elevation: 2'838 feet ascent (Aufstieg 865 m) / 2'441 feet descent (Abstieg 744 m)

Camping at: Inn the Clouds Hostel, Leadville

Boss and me hiked out very early again, at 5.45am! It's around 20 miles to the Tennessee Pass Trailhead, from where we hitch to Leadville. Leadville is supposed to be a very cool Skitown and they are the host of Melanzana, an outdoor cloth company which is famous for a certain type of jumper. The jumpers are being produced in Leadville, straight in the store. You can see the workers sewing the jumpers. And even though they don't make advertisements or have a wide offer (they have two types of jumper's only), they are super popular. That popular, that you need to make an appointment in order to buy a jumper! They make an exception for CDT hikers. We can buy one single jumper without appointment, as it is super hard for us to know three weeks in advance what date and time we will be there and book an appointment. So Boss and me are super excited to get to Leadville and buy such a jumper. The weather is cold and cloudy, it might start to rain soon. And the hike is not much different than yesterday. Ups and downs in the forest with no views, also because the clouds are blocking the rare views we would get on a sunny day. We hike the 21 miles without breaking, however the last 3 miles were though and seemed never ending! We reached the highway at 9.20am and tried to hitch. But no luck for 45 minutes, until a car pulled over coming from Leadville, bringing two CDT hikers back to trail. That's our lucky man, as he drives us down to Leadville! And straight infront of the Melanzana store, where I purchase my jumper! I am now in the cool colorado hiker club too, having a melanzana jumper🤣 we cross the street into the next restaurant and get food, what else😁 I was looking for an egg benedict for a long time, but never found it. This is the first restaurant serving egg benedict's since I started the trail. And it is super yummy but also super expensive. These towns in Colorado are very nice, but also very touristy and hence super expensive. Breakfast costs me 30 dollars! Even for Switzerland that is a lot for a coffee and egg benedict's! But it shall serve as breakfast and lunch so it is ok I guess. We have booked a room at the Inn the clouds Hostel, which turned out to be a super nice Hostel. Bex is here, Shey, Vista, Ducky, Piper and Duskman, all my favorite trail people I hiked around lately 😁 and just as we got there, it started to rain cats and dogs. Lucky again!

In the evening I go out with Shey to eat a filet mignon and it was the best meat piece I have eaten in the US, and very cheap too. It was even served medium rare (americans normally don't like to serve meat bloody, for them meat needs to be cooked well) and suuuuper yummy! Margarita's are 4 bucks only. We really enjoy our dinner and drinks, and thereafter move on to the next bar for a yummy cocktail and on the way back to the Hostel to the next bar for a roadie🤣 it was a very, very nice evening!