Day 15 – 5/7/13 – 21.4 mi (268)
It was a cold night complete with frost on my tent this morning. I hiked over an hour before taking off my puffy and then still kept my rain jacket on for a while. Mid-morning we hit actual trail and followed it through a burn area until lunch. This is where he confusion started. The Ley maps we’re all using showed 1.1 miles between 2 dirt road crossings. On the easy trail tread, that should have been about 20 minutes. We later realized the Ley maps showing 1.1 miles indicated a road route, not the official CDT route we took, which added at least an extra mile. We found Puck stopped for a break and joined him for our lunch. Afterwards, all of us opted for an alternate to the official CDT shown on our maps since it was about 2 miles shorter and more importantly, there was water on the way. We found the water and tanked up no problem.
Then we started to follow a dirt road which was to lead us into a canyon that we would follow cross country up to a ridge to rejoin the official CDT. Unfortunately, we missed a turn to stay on the correct road and ended up on another one. We decided to just follow this wrong road since it was headed in the right direction, just with extra distance as it wound in and out of drainages. When we got close to the ridge where the official CDT was, we cut straight up a hill to meet it.
Zigzagging back and forth over where the trail was marked on our maps and GPS, we found no trail. After a while we decided to try to head back to the road and follow it further. Along the way while waiting for half of us to catch up, Liz noticed a blaze cut into a tree! We were indeed “on trail”, there was just no tread to be found.
We followed the markers for another hour and a half up a steep mountain and back down the other side. On the way down we found a nice flat spot and decided to call it a day. We’ll see how tomorrow goes but I’m not getting my hopes up too high for reaching Pie Town on Thursday, which seemed so doable only yesterday.
The Daily Ninjups Report
It was much too cold this morning, and there were too many blisters that needed attention at lunch, so Ninja didn’t get around to her push-ups until supper time. Then she did ten!