Day 94 – 7/25/13 – 20.7 mi (1657.5)

I don’t know how to express how great today was. The moment I opened my eyes this morning, I immediately fumbled around for my camera and flip flops and jumped out of my tent to catch the awesome sunrise.

Just a few tenths of a mile after rejoining the CDT, we left it again to take the alternate over Knapsack Col. This is a more difficult and time consuming route than the official trail, but we had heard it was great. Indeed! We had several miles of trail up a valley full of lakes and wildflowers with spiky peaks towering in the background.

After the trail ended we climbed up talus fields among rapidly melting glaciers to finally reach the pass, somewhere around 12,000′. We had lunch at the top before dropping down the other side, which was an easier route. The whole thing really wasn’t very difficult and was certainly well worth the effort. Oh, and it thundered, rained and hailed on us a bit on the ascent and descent. No big deal.

It cleared up by the time we dropped down to Peak Lake, one of the finest lakes I’ve ever seen.

The rest of the afternoon we followed the Green River from its source down a long valley. This is the same Green River that eventually joins the Colorado in Utah.

We are entering the lower reaches of grizzly country and are trying to take it seriously. Many of us got bear spray in Pinedale, and tonight we stopped to cook dinner a few miles before camping. The day was slightly soured for me due to bear bagging at camp (hanging your food from a tree with rope). It turns out I am very bad at this. I had much trouble finding a suitable tree, and then after about 20 unsuccessful tosses of my rope over the branch, Stryder offered to let me hang my food with his. While trying to get our bags hoisted up properly, I ended up with about a dozen mosquito bites on my butt. I kinda threw a two minute temper tantrum.