Day 3. Best day of the Colorado trail. Incredible views! 19 mile day.
A thru hiker stopped by in the morning as he was out of water. He couldn't find the seep last night. He said he found lots of muddy water, though. We told him to fill up from our jugs, as Alex was going into town to refill all our water. 3 more hikers came by just as he was leaving. They were very thankful to get all the water they wanted.
Val opted not to ride today, our hardest day. She chose to ride with the driver down into town for water and another hour or so back up to Day 3 camp. She and Alex were going to hike up to Kennebec Pass from camp, once camp was set up. Don left about 30 minutes before us.
Rode rolling singletrack for about 8 miles. Then we started a hefty climb to Indian Trail ridge. We were expecting a rocky, exposed trail on the ridge. We were pleasantly surprised with perfect, pine-needle, narrow singletrack in the trees for about 2.5 miles, before we broke out of the trees and found a rougher ridge trail.
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| Rolling, perfect singletrack for our first 8 miles |
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Gorgeous "Ridge" singletrack for 2.5 miles
on Indian Ridge |
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| Where is the air at 11,500 feet? |
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| Kevin with the next hill in sight |
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| Hike-a-biking at almost 12,000 feet |
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| This would be wilderness in Washington State |
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Little rocky for me (walking) - but not for the local
on the hardtail riding behind me |
We caught up with Don at the top of the above rocky descent. He was able to video Kevin riding down the rocky ridge. Francine took a hard crash earlier in the day, so we should have met up earlier. Met up with Val and Alex at the top of Kennebec pass. They hiked up from camp. Good thing we had great directions from Val, as we would have missed the obscure turnoff to camp.
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| We had probably 4 ridges to go up and down, all above 12,000 feet |
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| Don walking with Francine resting |
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| Picking our way thru the rocks - yes there is a trail |
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| Don - coming off our final highpoint for the day at 12,258 feet |
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| Steep and rocky trail from the day's highpoint - 12,258 feet |
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| Still walking down |
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| Yeah - on my bike, descending near Taylor Lake |
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| Descended off the ridge in the left background |
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| Climbing toward Kennebec Pass - 11,680 feet |
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| Descent off Kennebec Pass |
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| Abandoned Muldoon Mine near Kennebec Pass |
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| Final night camp 10,600 feet |
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| View from our tent |
No rain or thunder or lightning tonite. I'll take two days of the rain, to have one dry night. Deer came by the tent in the evening. We thought it was a bear sniffing outside.
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