We woke up to sunlight and a calm sky. There was no wind at all and the bright sun made getting going a lot easier than the day before.
The trail so far has traversed along the mountains. When you’re on a south facing slope, the going is easy. Almost all of the snow has melted and you can hike like normal.
North facing slopes are different. They still contain large snowfields and tons of snow in the trees. They can still be pretty fun if they’re not too steep.
Despite pretty favorable conditions, we were still pretty slow to make progress. Walking in the snow uses a lot of energy and there were a few places we needed to take out our ice axes, which takes time.
All this hard work rewarded us with some epic views. On a few of the north facing slopes, instead of struggling through the woods, postholing in snow, we would drop down to the valley and go straight up the mountain to where the trail wrapped around.
After about 15 miles we had a decision to make about going on or making camp. It was about 4:30 pm which leaves plenty of daylight for hiking. They catch was that after a big climb, most of the next 8 miles were above 12,000 feet, with little good camping.
We eventually decided to call it a day and make camp. The sun was shining and it was a really nice evening.
Now it’s almost certain we’ll be a day late into Pagosa Springs, unless we do a really big day tomorrow. With the way things have been going, that seems unlikely.