For hiking purposes, the weather cleared right up over night. I’d like to say I jumped right out of bed refreshed and ready to go when my alarm went off, but I was having a nice dream and decided to sleep in another half hour. And then I got distracted by random internet goings-on for another hour. Finally at 7:45, I convinced myself to buckle down and get the last post written, and that was uploaded around 8:15.
Next, I decided to get dressed for hiking. I didn’t need to shower, so I could jump right into getting my shoes on and my legs and face sunscreened.
By 8:30, I was ready to start making breakfast. Since checkout time was 10am, I was packing up all the things I’d hung up to dry while I was cooking pancakes (4 regular, 1 large) and sausage (16) and listening to podcasts, and getting caught up on the news while eating and drinking a pint of orange juice. I was 90% done with all this by 9:30 and full enough to put in several hours of hiking without getting hungry.
All that was left was to wax my mustache so it would stop getting in my mouth and wash and put away the dishes and pan I’d just used. I got the last few things packed up and walked out just before 10am. I walked out to the highway and stuck out my thumb, and within ten minutes, I was in a truck headed to the pass.
The driver was Andy, a Lake City native. He was on his way to the pass to drop off Gallant and Kim, two stray hikers from South Korea, who he’d taken in for a couple days. He knew everything about the area and kept pointing out geographical features and facts along the way. I chatted with Gallant as well, who was already a triple-crown, and was taking Kim (who was either less chatty or less conversant with the English language) on a random adventure involving the Arizona Trail and the Colorado Trail.
We got to the trailhead before 11am, and I went on ahead while Andy and the others had some long goodbyes. Those two passed me on the long initial climb and were tiny figures in the distance by the time I reached the top of the mesa. I passed them at lunch, then they passed me when I stopped for lunch an hour later. I didn’t see them again.
I wasn’t super hungry at lunch thanks to just having had a big breakfast 3.5 hours before, though I dutifully ate it all just to make sure I kept a good pace. But the real reason I stopped was to sew up some new and worsening holes in my gloves that were worrying me when out on the exposed mesa top on a sunny day. I spent an extra hour after lunch sitting on a rock sewing while the winds blew and occasionally gusted and the flies kept landing on my arms and legs. Neither of these things make it too much more difficult to sew, surprisingly. They probably slowed the whole operation down by less than a minute overall. Mostly it was just how big the sewing job was.
Soon after leaving there, the mesa dropped away into a creek valley, but the trail avoided that by climbing up the sides of the mountains, over the top of one, and down around another through a pass, very zig-zaggy. Although it started with a lot of rocks and careful picking, the trail found its way into a forest, and mostly stayed there for the rest of the evening.
I came through a pass where three guys were huddled among three tents, but I didn’t stop to talk to them. I went down into the extremely cool, shaded valley below and then stopped near the top of a small hill to make dinner. Just beyond there, near some beaver ponds, there were some great campsites, but I still had some daylight, so I started climbing the next hill.
I met a sobo coming down same hill who said he had seen Waldo earlier in the day about to climb San Luis. That meant that the kids at the hostel had gotten back on trail fairly early, that he had already done the 18 miles from Spring Creek Pass to the summit trail by early afternoon, and was going to get to the top while it was sunny and clear. What a speed demon.
Anyway, I just went over the top of the next ridge, down into the next valley, then climbed up a steep hill to a nice flat campsite surrounded by dead trees at the base of a rock slide. It was only a mile and some change from where I ate dinner, but it was already 8:30, and the next viable campsite was several steep miles away. Anyway, I was already in striking distance of San Luis myself. That would be for the following day.
Trail miles: 12.1
Distance to Monarch Pass: 87.2 miles
One reply on “Day 31: E Mineral Creek Canyon”
Beautiful pictures today and I LOVE that flower!