Tuesday, August 18th, 2020
A squirrel stole his socks. Now they have sleeping bags. Frisbee always sleeps with his socks in his bivy. Well, almost always. He didn’t last night and now they’ve vanished. He was testing out a new brand of socks to see how well they stayed intact. They were doing pretty good too! They made it 300 miles with no holes. He laid them out to take a picture of how well they’ve held up and wouldn’t see them again. A squirrel stole his socks.
Another thing he never does is carry a spare pair of socks. Well, almost never. He coincidentally brought an extra pair while he was testing the new brand out, so he was in luck! After a thorough search of the area, even looking up at the trees, he called it a loss and put the new ones on before we started our road walk.
We were on highly exposed, dirt roads for a while, so we covered as much ground as we could before the sun reached its peak. We only saw one person tenting nearby, then it was only cows to talk to the remainder of the morning. One of them was kind enough to bathe and poop in our next water source. We carry bleach for this specific reason!
There were very few trees, but whenever we approached a cluster of them, we too advantage of the shade to hydrate and calorie up. Right at noon, the road went through a micro forest of aspen trees. The shade felt so nice! We decided to take a power nap before continuing onward. We had more exposed trail ahead of us.
It was a relief once we reached a lush, green valley and semi-clean water. There were beaver dams nearby, but at least the water wasn’t brown! We were so hot, we dunked our heads in the water and soaked our shirts before we followed the river up to a ridge. The view of the river below was beautiful. Then it was gone, and now we were entering a field and had to dodge cow patties.
We passed a trailhead parking lot before we entered the La Garita Wilderness. A ranch was seen in the distance and the fenced in property had some Longhorn cattle grazing within it. I’m always fascinated with how they manage to go through life carrying such a massive load on their heads.
It was nothing but lush valley surrounding us the rest of the evening. There was plenty of water and we were feeling pretty tired. The plan had been to hike another 30 miles, which we could’ve done if we pushed ourselves a little further. However, neither of us had it in us and decided to call it once we reached a nice camp site with a view of the surrounding mountains. We got a nice sunset and restful sleep at mile mark 337.2.
27.7 miles (44.6 km)
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Start from the Beginning: The Colorado Trail: Part 1
Stubbs Rambles On 