September 7, 2013

September 7, 2013

Spring Creek Pass to ??

6 miles

I think Dottie may have outdone her dinner last night with the breakfast spread prepared this morning. Scrambled eggs with cheese and salsa, bread for toast, fruit salad, cinnamon rolls, and peach cobbler, all homemade from scratch. Amazing. 

After breakfast and getting packed  up we headed to town for a stop at the Post Office and outdoor store before getting a short driving tour of the mining area of Creede up in the hills. It was interesting to see, especially some of the old building that they still use which are literally blasted into the rock. The only protruding part of some buildings was a roof over the porch. We then drove up some forest roads and got a better look at all the area that was burned by this year's fires. It was incredible to see how the fire had jumped in some places leaving trees untouched while others were reduced to black spindly matchsticks. 

Once back to the trailhead we took some pictures and said our goodbyes. Lowell and Dottie headed back to Creede, Optimist and Stopwatch headed north on the trail, and I headed south. 

By the time I started hiking again clouds were already building up with what looked like the makings of a coming storm. Sure enough, about 6 miles south of the pass thunder began rumbling, followed shortly by some light rain. As the rain intensified I decided to stop to put up my tent to wait out the squall. The precip turned from rain to hail and there were a few lightning flashes I could see that were separated from thunder by less than 2 seconds. The storm seems to have passed, at least for the moment, and I am debating whether or not I want to keep hiking even though it's only 4 o'clock. My body is feeling pretty drained of energy at the moment due to the big miles of the past few days and I'm not really concerned about having enough food to make it to Wolf Creek Pass. I guess I'll give it a little more time and if it looks clear than I'll hike a few more. 

I decided to be lazy the rest of the day and just lay down, curled up, and rested for the afternoon. I'm hoping to be reenergized tomorrow morning and get in some solid hiking the next few days through the San Juans.