After a night of rain, it’s always harder to get up and go. Everything is just a little more complicated when it’s wet outside. You don’t want to set the dry stuff from inside your tent on the wet ground, but you need to get everything out before you can take it out.
Despite all that, we got going before 6 am and made our way along Lake Granby towards the town of Grand Lake. The hike was largely uneventful, until the last 6 or so miles when it started raining. The stuff in my bag was already wet from my tent and the rain outside didn’t help.
Walking into town was a stark contrast to the last time I was in Grand Lake in 2019. Back then, the weather was clear and I was able to enjoy a trail run and a drive through the national park. Today I wondered where I would be sleeping that wasn’t going to be soaking wet.
I made a decision to book a hotel room for two nights and get somewhere to stay dry since the weather looked a little rough. We all went to breakfast to eat and plan the next couple days.
After breakfast, the sun came out and we went to the park to spread out our gear. We became a bit of an attraction with tourists and locals asking us about our hike. Two college students even surveyed us about ur use of public lands. The sun was out just long enough to mostly dry everything. The hotel room will finish the job.
The next section of trail through Rocky Mountain National Park is nearly a loop. You start and finish about 5 miles apart. Instead of hiking on from the end, we decided to slackpack the loop and hitchhike back into town to stay another night.
Lots of other hikers had the same idea, but want to hitch back to the trail with the rest of their gear later on. Since we have a hotel room for two nights, they all left their extra gear in our room. Tomorrow should be fun as we all run up and down the trail through the national park.