Where is the Grizzly?

Day 99

Date: 08.08.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 1'931.6

Miles hiked: 25.0 miles / 40 km

Elevations: 4'081 feet ascent (1'245 m Aufstieg) / 3'812 feet descent (Abstieg 1'163 m)

Camping at: 8'743 feet / 2'666.6 m

It was a very cold night last night, at least it felt like the coldest night to me since I am on trail! I was glad I had my down inliner sleepingbag too. Also in the morning it was still very cold, so no chance for me to get up before 6am! Still, Mouse and I managed to hike out at 7.10am (Cheetah and Captain already left!). Our day started as it ended last night, with hiking through a burned area and over, under and around many blowdowns. We also had to ford a knee deep cold river that morning and met about 6 SOBO hikers! Only since a couple of days we started to run into Sobo hikers, who hike the CDT from the Canadian boarder down to the mexican boarder. We caught up with Captain and Cheetah shortly after 9am, when they stooped for their second breakfast. The cold temperatures this morning made us re-thinking our hiking plans. Is winter coming very soon already? Can we still make it in time to the Canadian boarder before the snow will hit us badly? There is an option, called the big sky alternate, which cut's off between 150 and 250 miles of the CDT. It is also supposed to be a beautiful hike, but differs a lot from the official Continental Divide and needs a lot of planing, as this alternate is not listed in our App. Also it is not one clear alternate, but you rather plan and choose your own routes and trails. We would have to buy paper maps, plan our own route and would have no info on water and other sources. But it would save us at least one week of hiking. We are discussing different options and are taking this alternate into consideration. Together we hiked on till lunch time. The trail changed from the burned area to a beautiful river valley, where the trail was flat but very muddy and swampy again. Still we managed to hike 13 miles till lunch at 12.30pm. I had ritz crackers and pepper boursin cheese with meat sticks for lunch, which I actually enjoyed a lot.

After lunch we had some climbs. I passed Captain, Cheetah and Mouse on the first climb. A couple of miles later I waited for them as we entered a forest. I am still a little scared hiking in forest alone, because of the grizzy's out here and feel much safer if there is more of us making noise and hiking together. I waited and waited and waited, but no one showed up. It made me a little nervous. Where are they? Did something happen? Shall I backtrack and look for them? I decided to wait another 5 minutes and otherwise hike back. But finally after about 20 to 25 minutes all of them turned up. They all had to use the nature bathrooms and it took them a little longer🤭! Shortly later we run into the K2's again, sitting next to a beautiful waterfall.

A little later we passed the two ocean creek. A very special creek, as it parts the water. The creek divides right there into two streams, one flowing to the pacific and one to the atlantic ocean. Pretty cool! And we met another Sobo hiker from Hongkong, telling us seeing a grizzly about 1.5 miles up the climb ahead. It is a very steep uphill, just over 2'000 feet of climb. The sun is out and it is very hot in the afternoon. This climb slowed us down enormously and also I always watched out for the grizzly. I really wanted to see this bear! But we weren't lucky, I didn't see any Grizzly, which doesn't mean he wasn't there. At the top of the climb we breaked for dinner at 6pm. I had carrots and squash mash, which looked quite interesting and different at the store when I bought it. But I didn't like it at all, and couldn't eat it! Also, I wasn't hungry anymore after this failure and too lazy to cook another meal too. So some m&m's and hot chocolate had to do it that night. We had a little less than 3 downhill miles to hike till camp and made it there by 7.30pm. Today felt like an obstacle hike. Either blowdowns in the morning and the afternoon or muddy and swampy trails in between. However, the trail is full of beautiful and colorful wildflowers all kind. Finally we made it and even got to see a porcupine climbing up a tree and hiding from us. We pitched our tents, Mouse and my tent nearly on top of each other so no grizzly can come in between 🤣

And safely stored our food and smelly products in our Ursack's and hang all 4 Bags on the same tree far away from camp. All of this takes all a lot of time, but we do our best to keep Grizzlys away from our camp sites. We only get to bed by 9.15pm! Good night!

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