July 10, 2021
Miles: 31.6 miles
Steps: 71,115
Woke up early enough to catch my 7am shuttle ride back to the trail. Roger That was suppose to ride the shuttle as well but something came up last minute so he was staying in town another day.
Had a nice trail angel drive me back, a former CDT hiker. She drove me right back to where I got off at South Pass City.
Got back to hiking just before 8am. It was a little later than I normally like to start but I knew I would be leaving the Great Divide Basin and enter the Wind River Range where water wouldn’t be an issue and would have shade.
The first 8 miles was just like what I had been hiking, dirt roads with no shade. Then finally back on a real trail and entered the woods.
I knew most of the rest of the day would be dealing with tree blow downs. The area got hit with a really bad storm back in September and not much had been done to clean it up. The worst part would be right before the turn off for the Cirque of the Towers alternate.
I did hear from Swift earlier in the day and he said the blows downs weren’t too bad except for the 1.5 miles before the turnoff. I asked if it was anywhere close to the blow downs right before Grand Lake. He said way easier than that.
Swift was mostly right. There were some bad spots for the most part it wasn’t too bad. However, just had to make sure I could see where the trail was when I had to walk around the down trees.
I did take one little detour on a road that parallels the trail. It was about the same distance only I knew I wouldn’t have to deal with blow downs.
About 3 miles before the big blow downs I started soaking my dinner that I planned to eat right before the hard part. However I ended up going a little farther as looking for a nice flat spot to eat and away from the mosquitos, they ended by being bad the rest of the evening.
Finally got to the turn off for the Cirque of the Towers and thinking the bad part was behind, but Swift’s intel wasn’t accurate. There were still a good bit of blow downs to deal with. Also, was having a hard time find a flat spot to camp for the night.
Finally about 1.5 miles on the turnoff I found a spot to camp just as it was getting dark.
Got 20 miles of this alternate before rejoining the CDT. The Cirque of the Towers is suppose to have some amazing views. However the sky had been smoggy all day as I believe there is or was a fire near the Wyoming/Idaho border and that was causing everything to look hazy. Hopefully things clear up by morning.