Since I got to bed so late, I had great reason to sleep a little later. I had my breakfast already ready to go, just my breakfast shake and some bars, but I figured I should get in one last shower too. At a bit before 10, I walked out to the southbound on-ramp to try to get a hitch to the trail.
As I said before, I slept fitfully at the Salida Inn, and I couldn’t stay asleep past 5. Eventually, I gave up and went into the kitchen for a muffin and to start the coffee brewing early. It was just me and a Great Divide cyclists who put on his helmet as soon as he rolled out of bed. By 6:45, I was walking into downtown a Salida and then out again to the edge of town where the bus stopped. The town was relatively quiet except for the gangs of roving deer in everyone’s front yards.
A few days of transit here, so enjoy this cartoon.
Cartoon ©2021 Kendra “Skunkbear” Allenby. Used with permission. https://www.kendraallenby.com/ https://www.instagram.com/kendra_allenby/
The floor of the shelter took a while to warm up and even once I had was not a very comfortable sleep. I tossed and turned all night with every angle hurting my back or my hips. That said, it did rain off and on throughout the night, and all of my stuff, including my tent stayed as dry as it was to begin with.
Which is to say that when I finally got up at 6am, only my shoes and socks were damp, as they had been when I took them off.
I had found another incredibly comfortable campsite. Shady but not too cool, free of both wind and condensation. I slept right through my alarm and woke up about 7. After taking some time in the woods to ensure I wouldn’t have to stop a couple of miles in, I started hiking about 9am.
Another day where the trail isn’t exciting, the weather isn’t that great, and my motivation isn’t soaring.
Although I woke at 6, I decided to spend some time sewing my gloves before I left my tent and didn’t start walking until after 8. The sun was out and mosquitos started swarming the moment I left the tent. I only had half a liter of water to make my breakfast in and was kind of hungry for the first three miles, all uphill.
The trail continues to be very unexciting, albeit now with longer waterless stretches!
I woke up at 6:30 feeling very groggy and slow moving. While I was getting myself going, my left quad started cramping up. My body clearly had no more interest in getting going than I did. But I finally started walking at 8 or so.
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.
I don’t know when I started waking up, but it felt cold out and my perfectly level little campsite kept me so cozy that I didn’t even want to poke my head out of my sleeping bag until after 6:30. The surrounding mountains kept the sun from hitting my tent until 7:20, when I was just starting to make packing progress, and it was 8am before I started the climb out.
And it was a beast of climb. Uphill for a straight mile, the last third at nearly a thousand feet elevation gain per mile. The whole thing took me over an hour.
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.