Day #36-Goodbyes and hellos and more snow. Miles hiked: 21.0

We were sad to leave our RV park oasis this morning, but a nice stale Coors made it better. I am in Colorado after all, right? 

The owner of the park graciously took us on the 30 minute drive back up to Wolf Creek pass and on we went again into the San Juan’s.

The climb was unremarkable at first, but we soon found ourselves on the north face of the ridge with plenty more waste deep snow to wade through or hopefully scoot across. This is definitely ics axe and microspikes terrain. The spikes give you so extra grip and the axe can save your life if you start to slide via “self arrest,” or digging in the spike like your life depends on it to stop the fall. 

Nevertheless, we completed a pretty exciting little climb to find ourselves over 12,000 ft again and feeling on top of the world.

Gogo has decided to take an alternate route called the Creede cutoff to avoid more sketchy snow and rough climbs, so we said goodbye to her at the trail junction, but will be happy to see her again soon! In other news, we reconnected with another hiker Gogo and I met early in New Mexico named Nanners. Glad to see him again and have him hang around for the next few days. We make a good team!

We fought hard for our 21 miles today, so Goodnight from a small meadow near some still-frozen alpine lakes.