Day 12: Frost

14-15 miles

Finished section 8, started Section 9.

It’s freezing. It’s nearly 4 AM and I’m too cold to get up, even to pee, so I zip up my sleeping bag tighter and burrow and doze. Then it’s 5 AM, 5:30 AM, 6 AM. At 7:30 AM it’s still brutally cold, but the sun is out and Granite heads out of the tent, so I follow.

We eat eggs wrapped in tortillas for breakfast. It’s our own concoction: freeze dried eggs, freeze dried broccoli and red peppers, freeze dried potatoes, powdered cheese, powdered sour cream, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. We couldn’t find any good vegetarian egg scrambles so we made these. I dumped a bit in Breckenridge because the breakfasts are always overwhelmingly large, and now my egg scramble fits perfectly in a single tortilla, like a fat purse.

There’s frost all over the ground and I’m chilly even in my thermals, down puffy, and wool hat.

After breakfast, while Granite is still eating, I get back in the tent and indulge in my favorite morning ritual. I zip myself into my sleeping bag and liner and I wiggle my body into Granite’s 15 degree bag. Then I’m wrapped up in 2 layers of sleeping bag and my sleeping bag liner, with wool socks and a hat and an insulated mug of coffee. Then I open my Kindle and read.

A bit after 8, Granite comes back and we pack up. Normally I head out well before him and have an hour or more of solo hiking. But today I start late. He catches up to me after just a few minutes.

The day warms quickly as we descend 1,000 feet over the next mile or so. By 8:45 I’m warm, even my once-icy toes. By 9 AM, my wool hat and gloves and puffy jacket are back in my bag, and by 9:30 my pants are rolled up over my knees and I’m coated in sunblock.

Granite and I pass a few people, but the most interesting by far are a group of 3 forest service rangers. They’re carrying big nets on poles and one has a backpack with strange, tall, metal sticks jutting out of the top. They explain that they are electrofishing. Granite tells me they’re stunning the fish, either to remove an invasive species or do a fish census.

We pass out of pine forests and into aspen forests, dipping down into a valley and then following a stream for several miles. We pass a couple of short-haired women we’ve seen a few times before as they are breaking camp, and then we arrive in the sunny wide valley where Camp Hale used to exist.

Granite is excited about seeing the remnants of Camp Hale, but there isn’t much to it. Just a road and valley and tree-carpeted mountains around us. At the far end of the valley is a historic bunker and a few signs warning against entry. We poke our heads in the first doorway and it’s a dirty, windowless cell with some beer cans and trash.

While we’re outside, the couple we passed earlier arrives. They are Lexi and Destiny, and they live in New York (not the city) but are planning on moving to Montana or Colorado.  Like us, they struggled with Section 7.

“No switchbacks,” Lexi notes, and I agree.

They’re headed for Leadville for a resupply, and we bid them farewell as we lay out the tent to dry and eat lunch in the shade.

The next few miles are climbing, and it’s slow going even thought it’s far less steep than what we’ve tackled in the last two days. I zone out and daydream, and we speak little.

Eventually I feel like walking solo and we split up. There’s something healing about being in nature unobserved. I love the sensation of being unwatched, of experiencing the world’s beauty if solitude.

I cover a few miles on my own, stopping to sink my feet into a small spring and checking out a couple of old chimneys and burned brick buildings—historic cooking ovens, according to the guidebook.

We end Section 8 by a big busy road with a monument to the 10^th Mountain Division. Granite has been waiting for a while so I rest only briefly.

We have about 4 miles to get to Lilly Lake, a small lake on our map about half a mile from the CT. We both dream of alpine lakes and swimming, like in the Sierras. I like doing yoga on granite outcroppings over the water, and Granite loves wandering and taking photos with his fancy camera.

So we push through the last 4 miles, stopping to rest on a lovely swing someone placed by the side of the trail. We pass one sorry fellow who is headed to the highway, his right shoe covered in duct tape at the toe. He looks haggard.

Section 9 is smooth and rolling and my feet ache. I half-jog, because somehow that’s easier.

The turn off for the lake finally arrives and we hurry over a muddy, buggy, rutted jeep road. It takes forever but at last we reach the lake.

It’s no sparkling alpine lake, alas. It’s a lilly pad covered, weedy pond.

There’s thick mud on the banks. I strip off my pants and try to find a way out into the water, but it’s just too mucky.

We turn around and head to a campsite back by the stream, a half mile back near the CT. It’s mosquito-infested but smooth and quiet. I slip into the creek and rinse off. Just as I’m naked and rinsing my neck and arms, a jeep drives by on the dirt road.  I duck behind a tree. It’s funny how I can feel so alone and unwatched and comfortable in my skin in one moment, then have it all shatter in a moment when a stranger approaches.