It’s always hard to leave town. It’s hard to get out of bed. It’s hard to get a ride. It’s hard to leave before one last meal. Eventually though, we made it out.
Our ride was a couple in a Tesla that let us squeeze 4 people in the back seat. When we got to the National Park entrance, we didn’t want to get them in any trouble so we got out and decided to walk the last bit in.
This was maybe a mistake. We thought we were much closer to the trailhead than we actually were. Also, they wanted to charge us $15 a person to enter the park! We stood next to the entrance trying to get another ride. After a little bit a ranger came out and asked if we were CDT hikers. When we said we were he let us go through. Apparently the people that wanted to charge us were new.
Because of the late start we didn’t get a ton of hiking in, but we did make about 20 miles if you count the little bonus road walking we did after getting in the park.
We climbed up to Bowen Pass and met up with another big group of hikers. We’ve met them in passing a few times before but today we actually hiked a bit with them. They’re going to be in Steamboat at the same time, so that should be fun.
After the pass we descended into a valley and a somewhat recent burn area. This valley was basically a swamp and it was filled with mosquitos.
Eventually we made it to the bottom of the valley and began our climb out. We stopped a little bit up the next climb when we found some spots with even more hikers that we’ve never met.
I’m hoping for a big day tomorrow to get us really close to Steamboat for the 4th.