On to Copper Mountain...

We caught the first bus out of Frisco at about 6am to head to the trailhead (isn't that great? there's a free bus that takes you to the trailhead!). There's a lot of elevation gain today, so we wanted as early a start as possible. We passed another couple of Colorado Trail thru-hikers in the morning (a couple of guys from Portland).

There were a couple of pieces of gear that we weren't sure we'd use, the ice axes and the GPS. Today we were glad we had both of them. The trail was covered with snowdrifts in many places. The easiest thing to do was to key a waypoint into the GPS and then walk in that general direction (over the snowdrifts, while using the ice axes, of course). At one point the Portland hikers passed us, and asked where the trail was. We pointed out what we thought was correct, and they set off. We followed their tracks for a while, then decided that they were angling too far down the mountain (useful GPS thingy!). We realized later that they were actually headed for the wrong ski resort! Copper mountain (our destination) was actually over the ridge. They were heading straight for Breckenridge.

We crested the ridge of the Tenmile Range, and finally saw our real destination. There were also great views of Mt Massive and Holy Cross. The way was much clearer on the windward side of the mountain, so we were able to get into Copper at about 5:30. Rooms were expensive there, though, so we just took the bus back to Frisco for our third night there. We stayed at the Snowshoe motel, which was very nice. Frisco was preparing for a BBQ festival over the weekend, so there were meat smokers lining the old-town area. They smelled really good, so it was sad that we'd be leaving so early in the morning that we couldn't eat!

kim

First Zero Mileage day...

As you may have guessed, we spent the day in Frisco. Mostly updating this blog, running errands, and taking care of various business. Brent did some weird stuff with the mileage calculations, and we magically turned out to be a day ahead of schedule. Can't have that, so early in the hike, so we slacked a day!

We stayed at the Frisco Lodge (website here) which is a really nice bed and breakfast-y type place.

Frisco is a nice town!

kim

Into Frisco

We were visited by a hungry pine marten as we were eating breakfast this morning. He was very persistent, and didn't run off until I threatened him with an ice axe. Doubtless he would have enjoyed our granola more than we did. This isn't our guy, but this is what he looked like.

We rediscovered the joy of cold, wet clothes - our shoes had frozen over the night, and our shoelaces were stiff with frost. It becomes a lengthy process to tie frozen solid shoelaces with cold hands that don't work right!

As we get closer to the I-70 corridor, there's a lot of beetle kill in the area. The increased sunlight, combined with all the moisture we've been getting, seems to mean a lot of mushrooms. Kim found a bunch of golden mushrooms that were quite cold to the touch, much colder than the ambient temperature - and she also found an actual morel mushroom - I think that's quite rare in Colorado!

The morning cleared up after a while, and was quite nice. We could see Keystone and Breckenridge ski resorts come into view, and we arrived at the town of Frisco around 4pm (the Colorado Trail goes right through several subdivisions on its way into town, which is very strange)

We met Kevin, who is thru-biking the Colorado Trail (what he can of it - bikes have to detour around all the wilderness areas). He managed to get through the snow on Georgia Pass too, amazingly. He said it took him 13 hours of hurling his bike from one snow drift to another to get through. He sounded exhausted...

Brent

Our first serious snow

As we were departing our lovely campsite, we met Roger again this morning - turns out he's taking photos for the next edition of the Colorado Trail guidebook. He promised us fame, glory, and riches, as well as an appearance in the next edition. Of course, he only took pictures of our backs as we were looking at scenery. I wonder why that could be??

We got our first taste of what the snow situation is going to be like as we gained the Continental Divide for the first time today.

The snow wasn't so bad as we went up, at least it was mostly avoidable. And when we got to the divide, it suddenly cleared up, and we were standing in the only visibly sunny spot for miles - it was kind of neat, you could see the storms all around us. But on the way down, we had 4 miles of postholing through deep, deep snow.

It took us most of the afternoon to get through that four miles,

before we found a dry spot by a small pond, still kind of surrounded by snow. We had cold, wet feet,

and it was raining/snowing steadily through the afternoon, so it was definitely a setup the tarp, get into dry clothes, and cook a hot dinner from the comfort of our sleeping bag. It was actually kind of cozy... (at least by some twisted measure)

We discovered that, by some happenstance, all of my outer clothing is made of crinkly, lightweight, black material, that looks like a trash bag - my black stocking cap, my crinkly down jacket, and my wrinkled up, nylon wind pants. All I need is a drawstring, to be a genuine Glad trash bag imitation!

Brent

Hey, another thru-hiker!

We had a long 8-mile traverse of the Lost Park valley this morning - a high valley @10,800 feet in the Lost Creek wilderness area. The stream through this valley was populated by very hard working beavers - lots of huge dams and beaver lodges. We didn't see any of the actual residents though.

The higher elevations in this area are populated by huge happy aspen stands, which provided some shelter from the off-and-on snow squalls. It finally cleared out by the end of the day, and actually got a little warm which was nice.

We met our first fellow thru-hiker of the trip, a retired dentist named Roger. He was camped at the bottom of a beautiful valley with a good stream running through it. It looked like a really cold campsite (cold air always flows through those deep valleys from the higher elevations, as we learned the hard way on the PCT) - but Roger was definitely enjoying himself.

We talked for a while, and we moved on a couple miles to a high point with panoramic views of the Ten-mile range, and Georgia pass, which makes our future look, well, snowy.

Brent

Creampuff

This is our last day hiking with Janelle and Nathan. We made really good time getting into Bailey by 2:30 pm. Once again, the mountain bikers on the trail sent us scrambling for cover. We know that they're just as entitled to the trail as we are, it would just be nice if they'd give a little warning before leaving tire treads on your pack. Janelle tried to adopt another random trail dog today (I think that she attracts them, we didn't see any lost dogs on the PCT). We named him Creampuff, which is indicative of his disposition and what was going on between his ears. Janelle fed him a pack of peanut butter crackers (she didn't seem to want them!) and he followed us for several miles. We were getting a little concerned about what we'd do with him when we lost him at a trail head. Today was the first day Nathan's knees really started acting up, so we fed him some vitamin I(buprofen) and he was all better! I love that stuff!

Before Nathan and Janelle left from Bailey, I stole Janelle's inflatable Thermarest. I just can't handle the closed cell foam. I'm such a wimp.

Today we hiked 12 miles with Janelle and Nathan, then Brent and I did another 4.5 into Lost Creek Wilderness.

Kim

Janelle Doesn't like Peanut Butter!

This is unfortunate, given our lunch today of peanut butter and peanut butter crackers. Poor Janelle. It was a very unpleasant lunch for her. Of course, this means that she can't be a true long-distance hiker. I think that there's a box you have to check on the application, and if you don't like peanut butter, they throw you out of the club.

We spent most of the day walking through alternating burn zones and pine forest. There were abandoned quarries too. There aren't as many bikers in this part, so we spent much less time dodging them. The water's been a bit icky though. Probably because it's been raining so much. I've been throwing tantrums at the number of floaties in my water, so Brent finally started filtering it through his bandanna. It was much better after that; not nearly so chewy.

Our campsite tonight was really nice, though. It was roomy enough for both our tents, with a kitcheny-nook off to one side. There was even dry stacked firewood under a boulder! So we had a fire with dinner, Sukhi's curries (tastee!). Unfortunately, we also discovered at dinner that our fuel source had changed completely. We use yellow Heet as our fuel, and we had some we got at Walmart, and it was totally different than the normal stuff - gummy, and sticky! It burned terribly with lots of flaring, and it gunked up our stove something awful. We'll have to pick up some new stuff at the first opportunity!

Today was a 14 miler.

Kim