Monday, September 1, 2025
30.7 miles, 7000’/4222′
I was up at 6am, and heading out of town by 6:30am.
I hiked out of town after a crappy night of sleep. I passed Zig Zag pretty early. I felt kind of cranky but the day was beautiful with lots of sunshine and dry weather. I missed a few turns and added some miles, but I focused on more consistent nutrition and hydration, stopping to filter water more frequently. I also stopped for 15 minutes around 3:15pm for a break to eat ramen and dry out my tent.
I was very happy to be out of town and away from tourists. It was smooth, relatively flat sailing around a number of lakes and rivers (with plenty of tourists at roads and trailheads) for the first ~17 miles and then a fair amount of smooth climbing to get out beyond their reach. I pushed a few miles extra to avoid weekend hikers camped out, as well as to do a more even distribution of elevation gain between today and tomorrow. So I had a bit of a climb for my last miles, but I made the best of it. I had my first CO moose sighting, and I almost bumped into her, per tradition.
I was in bed by 9pm. There were 3 CO hikers from Steamboat Springs there, hiking from the CDT nearby home to Durango, so they were at the start of their journey. We chatted for a few minutes and then I went to my tent. It was extremely windy but I found a nice little nest in the last bunch of trees before the ascent to the ridgeline. It was nice to have quiet neighbors.
