[Day 49] Twin Lakes

My backpack was strapped up around 8:30am. I’ve been discontented with my starting hours, and I need to shift to an earlier bed time to accommodate better start time. Will this happen? Unlikely.

Similar to the previous day, I skirted the eastern saddles and side of the Ivy League mountains, en route to merge with the Collegiate West and official CDT at Twin Lakes.

A couple of hikers caught me on my lunch break at midday. I am forgetting their names, but they certainly knew mine. They were on the CDT and similarly taking the snow free Collegiate East. Following my lead in the Southern San Juan’s, they headed in, but carrying cross country ski equipment. The two ended up bailing less than 20 miles into the San Juan’s and instead routed the shortest possible way to avoid the San Juan’s. This seems to be the theme of CDT hikers I find near me.

I hiked for a bit with the two, but I sort of realized they weren’t my kind. First of, they carried near to nothing. Their backpacks looked to be filled more with wrappers and trash than equipment. Neither of them filtered their water. Instead, they treated everything with bleach or Aquamira. Now, on occasions at very clean sources, I may chose not to filter my water. Many spots in the Sierras I filled my bottles direct from streams. Oregon’s Middle Sister had a spring bubbling straight out of lava rock. And, my favorite source I’ve drank from, Lander’s Meadows on the PCT was a piped mineral spring apparently coming deep from an underground water table.

One of the guys had really bad giardia from drinking unfiltered waters from New Mexico. Every water source in New Mexico is shared with grazing animals. Cow pies litter the New Mexico earth up to 10,000 feet, and I’ve seen cow manure up to 12,000 feet in Colorado. Choosing not to filter or chemically treat when it’s cheap, light, and a foolproof way to prevent illness is beyond me.

People must’ve been drinking direct from sources without serious treatment or filtering only a matter of 100 years ago in this country. Still today, there are countries where treatment of water sources isn’t common. I would have to figure people protected and separated their critical water sources from contamination. On a long distance hike, there isn’t this option to have faith in what’s upstream or what animal wastes have made their way into the source. Everything — unless the source is heavily trusted — should be filtered or treated before consumption.

These two also carried almost no food. They hurriedly traveled 30 or more miles a day, jumping off trail at unnatural spots to get to civilization and resupply. Everyone has their own way, I guess. They also hadn’t spent many nights in the backcountry. Friends of theirs would pick them up almost daily on remote dirt roads and take them into towns. Though they were nice and we got along, I had no intention of hiking with them beyond an hour.

I hiked myself to the merge with the Collegiate West and began to meander around Twin Lakes. The trail does large roundabout encompassing the lakes, presumably to get to the dam crossing on the far east side of the larger lake.

After a late stroll around the lake, I pitched my tent on sands of the lake shoreline, on an isthmus near the dam. Depending how the weather looks tomorrow, I might make a go at Mt. Elbert — the second highest peak in the lower 48 states.

Signing off,

Zeppelin / fReaK (ON a leash)