Still full of pizza, but leaving Salida

After a lovely waffle breakfast, Jon (our host at a Simple Lodge) agreed to take us back up to the trailhead this morning. We were very grateful, since it was such a hassle to get down yesterday! We arrived at the trailhead around 8:30, and began a series of steep climbs to gain back the altitude we lost leaving the Divide. A lot of the rest of the day was ridge-walking, high and dry, and really impressive views. And, of course, just because we said we probably wouldn't, we did completely lose the trail once. It was on a tree covered, snowy hillside, and we had to hike straight up the hill (mountain, really) through cold, boggy snowmelt to find it again. Cold, wet shoes, but at least they had time to dry out.

Another noteworthy thing today - the weather. We could see the thunderstorms all around us. 360 degrees of unpleasant looking weather, at around 12,000 feet even, but we never got rained on. It was amazing, and made for really neat cloud formations.

The Colorado Trail joined up again with the Continental Divide Trail for about the next 130 miles, maybe we'll run into someone we know!

We took a bunch of pictures today, so I'll just put a bunch here:



kim