Our morning at the lake proved restful and we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise thanks to Denver’s smog. It was an unusual morning with sunshine and no condensation or rain on our tents. We left early and hiked up a ridge along the CDT.
As the CDT dove into a valley, we stayed high on the ridge, heading towards Jasper Peak. After some steep hiking and rock hopping, we made it to our first objective. That’s when the real fun began.
From Jasper, we followed a thin rocky ridge to the summit of Mount Neva. There was some fun scrambling with just enough exposure to have fun, without being any real danger.
Around there, we met a couple climbers who had just come up the route we were going to descend. They said it was pretty gnarly, but it looked fine to us so we continued on.
As you can see, it was in fact a pretty gnarly route. It danced on the edge of fun and scary, but made for an amazing day of climbing and hiking. It’s not for everyone, but it absolutely was better than the traditional CDT.
After finishing the traverse down from Neva, we enjoyed lunch at a lake and took in the views of what we had just accomplished.
From here, we dropped down Arapaho Pass and left the Pfiffner Traverse to make our way back to the CDT. The parents of some hikers we have been hiking with were staying at a campground along the trail and we wanted to stop by for some food and drinks.
On the way down, we jumped in Monarch Lake, and we’re quickly attacked by mosquitoes after we got our clothes off.
After that, it was a short walk on the road to the campground. We talked with everyone for a bit too long and as we were leaving, lightning and thunder started nearby. We made it just outside of the campground when we decided to run back and hide under the awning of the bathroom to let the storm pass.
As the thunder and lightning slowed, it became apparent that the rain wasn’t going to stop for a long time. Luckily there was an open campsite right in front of us.
During a lull in the rain we set up our tents and then dove into them with our dry gear from the bathroom. Setting up the tents was very hard since the hard gravelly ground wouldn’t hold a stake in the wind. Unfortunately for us, all of our tents rely on the tension of ropes to hold up the tent, with our trekking poles providing the supports.
It wasn’t the prettiest pitch of my tent on the trail, but it’s kept me dry so far. Tomorrow we’ll walk into the town of Grand Lake, the only town in Colorado that’s actually right on the trail.