Day 170 (CT 8)

Day 170 (CT 8): 27 miles

I’ve been sleeping pretty poorly this whole trail, probably because of the altitude but I’m not sure. I’ll fall asleep for a few hours, then wake up at like 2am and not be able to fall back asleep until like 6am. But by then it’s about time I start getting up, so I’ve only been getting probably 4-5 hours of good sleep a night. The same thing even happened sleeping in the RV in town, so I didn’t get back on trail until about 9 after Jerre dropped me off. One of the kindest and most entertaining and interesting trail angels I’ve ever met.

The day started with a fun and tough climb up to Snow Mesa which is a relatively flat expanse over 12,000 feet that I assume gets a good amount of snow in winter. Once I got up there, the wind started howling like crazy and didn’t stop all day. Rain is the thing that frustrates me the most and automatically puts me in a bad mood, but strong consistent wind is definitely second. It’s like a someone smacking you on the side of the head and yelling “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!” in your ear all day. Yes, I acknowledge you, now please stop.

Today was a lot of steep smallish climbs before finally descending late in the day. I dropped down near 10,00 feet which is a bit of a new thing. It’ll be a little bit before I climb above 12,000 again.

I think tonight was the first time I night hiked so far on this trail (excluding the first day of getting to the trailhead after dark which I probably shouldn’t count). But I’ll need to start doing it some more. I’ve been dilly dallying around with low mileages and I haven’t been night hiking because I wanted to really enjoy all the beauty of that amazing section of trail. But now that I’m entering the more “boring” section of trail, I’ll need to start doing some longer days again. I might even give myself a little insane challenge in the coming days to up the ante.

At the end of the day I got to a trail register and spent some time looking for my entry from last year and finally found it. Great insight it was.