It was another one of those relatively cozy mornings where I had to force myself to get up. I got started with things around 6:30. Tinker left as I was returning from fetching water at the creek, and I left sometime around 7:45.
There were lots of rabbits all around the trailhead (and Tinker said there was at least one mouse in the privy with him that night), but I didn’t see any more of them once I was moving along Cochetopa Creek.
Tinker is “hiking while elderly” and going dry slow, so despite leaving some fifteen minutes before me, I passed him only a mile in and didn’t see him again.
There wasn’t much single track trail to be had this day, and all of it was in the first six or so miles following Cochetopa Creek downstream. The trail was above the creek on the left side for a few miles, went down to cross it on some ad hoc logs, then was above it on the right for a few more miles until it joined a road that led up the hill and into a thick, lush aspen forest. In other words, I had to climb a hill and I didn’t even get rewarded with a view.
Coming out of that, I met a sobo who asked how it was. “Pretty boring,” I answered. He assured me there were some nice views over the next hill. He was right, but the road also got wider and more worn. There was more traffic. After lunch, one truck stopped and the driver asked if I needed anything. He had a big cooler in the front seat, but I didn’t ask for a beer. I didn’t even tell him I had used up the last of my water at lunch. Instead, I stopped at the next creek less than a mile down the road and filtered a couple of liters more.
It had been hazy since daybreak and the clouds had gotten thicker as the day went on. It was pretty gloomy. There were occasional short spells of light rain that I pretty much ignored. There was sometimes a strong, cool wind. It had felt nice in the morning, but made it uncomfortable to sit still in the late afternoon. In other words, it wasn’t the kind of weather that made me particularly thirsty. I honestly didn’t need anything.
After a while, the trail went down a less trafficked road, though it was still open to motor vehicles. Up a long shallow hill, through a gate or two, and down the other side brought me to a creek where a herd of cattle gathered. I ran them off and sat down on a rock to eat supper. There was another road right behind me with occasional trucks passing.
When I set out up the road, a cyclist came up beside me, clearly out doing the Great Divide Route, based on the pouches and bags all over his bike. He pointed out the two switchbacks we were doing now were shared by the GDR and the CT/CDT. Just a few hundred feet they have in common. At the top of the hill, he had kept going along the road while I turned down a side road closed to traffic.
All the way down the Stewart Creek Trail the previous day, I had been seeing a nearly continuous border of strawberry plants. And as many of them were just flowering, I had felt very jealous of anyone who happened to come the same way in a few weeks time. But here in the middle of this wide dirt road, I managed to find some strawberries ahead of schedule, and one of them already wielded one large, sweet strawberry. All the others I saw were not fruiting or were not ripe, but I’ll take what I can get.
A mile or so in, it started raining again, and the cloud wasn’t moving very fast. I figured it might continue long enough to get annoyingly wet, so I stopped at the top of the hill and set up my tent right on the road. With the road closed to traffic, I had no reason to worry about blocking the edge of the road.
It did indeed, rain for another half hour or so after I got inside, and then it just randomly started and stopped sprinkling for the rest of the night.
All in all, a pretty uneventful day. The most exciting part was probably the mango chipotle Salmon Creations I had for lunch. It was my first time trying the flavor as most stores don’t carry it, and I was honestly floored at how good it turned out to be compared to most of the flavors in the Starkist “Creations” line. Sound like kind of a mundane thing to get excited about? That’s the kind of day it was. Just one of those keep-walking-until-your-legs-are-chafed-and-your-feet-are-sore-without-any-great-reward sorts of days.
Trail miles: 21.6
Distance to Monarch: 50.9 miles
Tinker 
Beavers make the best swimming holes, but the weather wasn’t warm enough to go for it 
