I slept in until 8am; the usual town activities and chores left me lacking on quality rest. The expectations of a town stop are inverted — you expect rest and recovery, but business leaves you occupied, occasionally frantic, and ultimately tired. That is, if you intend to leave town within a reasonable time (about a day). As I left my sheltered bunker room, it started raining — not hard, but the kind that’s perpetual and wetting.
| 🗓️ Date | June 17th |
| ⇢ Mileage | 21.4 |
| 📍 Trip Mileage | 1151.2 |
| ⛅️ Weather | Rain to sleet to snow in the morning, afternoon flurries, cleared into Copper, clear evening |
| 🏞️ Trail Conditions | Clear below 10,000 feet; snow covered above 11,000 feet |
Climbing up into the Tenmile Range, the rain soon turned to sleet, which turned to big snow flurries. The storm snowed almost two to three inches at higher elevation. Postholing was every other step for some five or six miles today.
Dang and Knuckles caught me, unsurprisingly, about 10 miles into my day. We have hit it off already, and we rolled over Searle Pass bound for Copper Mountain Resort.
Dang is a tall, lanky kid from Napa adding the CDT to his collection. Similar to myself, he has the PCT under his belt. Knuckles is a tall French gear designer and fabricator with quite a few European long distance hikes under his belt. He came abroad to see a more rugged wilderness, one without the abundant ski villages found in the Pyrenees.
We rolled in Copper to a large barbecue festival. We lunched on burgers at the tavern at the resort and grabbed Starbucks before heading out for a few more miles
Camp arrived quickly at 7pm. We cooked, ate, and hit the hay. The objective is to try for resupply at Silverthorne in a few days via a hitch from Highway 70. It’s not a typical hitching and resupply point for many hikers, but I’m sure it’ll do.
Signing off,
Zeppelin / fReaK (ON a leash)
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