Neither of us wanted to leave the luxurious (to us) hotel this morning. We enjoyed a lazy breakfast and I even FaceTimed with my parents while packing up.
By the time we walked out of the hotel, it was 9:30. We did our best to follow the way out of town as shown on the CalTopo app, but it wasn’t as straightforward as one would think. However, the trail we ended up on was in great shape and very easy to hike on. There were even bridges (bridges!) so we didn’t have to get our feet wet.
Hey Yellowstone, check out what the Custer Gallatin National Forest has done with the difficult river crossings - they installed bridges. Crazy, huh?
I enjoyed the trail today. Even though it was a lot of green tunnel, the trail was well maintained AND we were back in the mountains again, going up and over two passes. It wasn’t easy but it the Spanish Peaks area sure is pretty.
We took several breaks - one for lunch, one after going up and over the first nearly 9,600 ft pass, another because I was hating the rocky downhill (shocker), and then of course we stopped to boil water for dinner and finally to eat said dinner. I would have liked to take more breaks, actually, but we barely made it to camp before dark as it was.
I don’t know how much elevation gain we had today as the CalTopo app isn’t as user-friendly as FarOut, but it was a lot - definitely more than we’ve had in a while, anyway. After dinner, we walked uphill again for over 2.5 miles (thank god it wasn’t downhill for that long). Still, it seems crazy that we only went 18 miles. Oh well. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll go faster - we have a resupply to pick up in Ennis.
Damn, I’m exhausted. Maybe we should have stayed an extra day in Big Sky. :)
Along the trail:
Camp:
