Our peaceful sunset last night turned into a bit of a wind nightmare. The tents were shaking all night, but luckily I had some earplugs that helped with the noise.
Even though we were camped over 12k, the climb to the top of San Luis Peak was pretty hard. The air up there is thin and we had to climb over 1000 feet. Eventually we made it and the views were awesome.
On the way down, we took a different trail than we came up. It met up with the CDT after a few miles and it went down a drainage with a ton of beaver dams.
The beavers in this valley literally built 100 dams and totally changed the landscape. Looks like humans aren’t the only engineers in the world.
This route is also the traditional route up the peak so we saw a ton of day hikers. No trail magic unfortunately.
Further down the river we saw a moose! This is my 4th moose of the trail. The wildlife on the CDT has been amazing. We also saw an antelope today once we got down lower in elevation.
Once we got low enough the trail reminded me of New Mexico. Lots of jeep roads and not very much water. It’s the first day we’ve camped below 10k in a long time.
Just two more days to town.