CDT76
9th July Sunday
25 miles .
Not a good start this morning, I was attacked by mosquitoes while having breakfast. I had my oatmeal that I had left to soak overnight with raisins in an old peanut butter container. But the mosquitoes were relentless and drove me mad. Then the first couple of hours on the trail, I followed the wrong trail, no less than three times and one particular trail lead me on the wrong side of the hill that required me to climb up and over the hill to return to the trail.
But after mid morning the trail became more obvious and the going easy, but still the mosquitoes were with me.
River crossings have been easy to date, usually, you look about up stream and often there’s a large tree that has fallen across the river and that substitutes for a bridge if you are cautious in crossing or you can just find rocks to walk on to keep your boots dry. But this afternoon I come across an almost impassable river crossing.
I underestimated it, after I changed into my camp shoes that are made of rubber, I crossed to find that half way it got deep, to my reckoning it slipped away to probably deeper than my chest.
I retreated, feeling the extreme cold water that comes straight from the snowy mountains where my feet were in extreme pain from the cold water.
I walked upstream about half a mile until I come upon streams that feed into the major river. All up there were four of these crossings that came from the mountains around me. Each crossing was brutally cold and the current was swift, but I finally made it across with my dry boots attached to my backpack.
I struggled the last couple of hours of the day, Thankfully there weren’t any serious hill climbs but I passed many lakes and it was a pleasure to walk in open field with green pastures.
After doing my 25 miles quota for the day, I found a nice spot overlooking a couple of lakes, I set up camp on a hill away from water with the hope I’ll escape the mosquitoes, unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
Start 1809 miles 6am, finished 7pm 1834 miles