The day started early. Despite needing more sleep, I LOVE hiking at first light. It’s quiet, peaceful, and serene.
The trail was stunning yet challenging, which seems to be the trend here in The Winds. Even the ‘flat’ sections this morning were rocky and muddy, which made for slow going. Still, it was absolutely gorgeous. (I will probably be saying this a lot, but the Knapsack Col alternate was some of the most beautiful hiking I’ve ever experienced).
The toughest part of the day was going up Knapsack Col pass. There were two ways to get to the top, and several comments in the FarOut app said to go left around the Twins Glacier instead of to the right. As there was no trail to follow, we hiked what seemed like the easiest path. At first it seemed like we were winning the day, finding a decent, not- too-steep way up the boulders to the glacier.
The path we took from the glacier up to the pass ended up being the worst way ever. I think perhaps we didn’t go far enough to the left, which meant we ended up somewhere in the middle. The boulder scrambling we had to do wasn’t terrible, even though it was straight up. What WAS terrible was when we had to forge our own paths in the snowfield- making your own snow steps is exhausting and takes forever, particularly when you don’t have micro spikes on your shoes or snow baskets on your poles.
Even worse than walking across the snow was when we found ourselves on an extremely steep patch of scree. I had flashbacks to the off-trail climb I did on Day 50, although I think today’s adventure might have been even more difficult. We somehow made it up and over that scree field by crawling and finding what little purchase in the loose rocks we could. After that, there was a little more snow and then, finally, an actual trail. In hindsight we should have followed the trail on the app and gone to the right. But we made it and didn’t die so it’s a win, even though it took us a very, very long time to get to the top.
The way down the other side wasn’t as gnarly as the way up, but it, too, took a while since we mostly picked our way down large boulders.
As we got closer to the lakes at the bottom, we both thought the hard part of the day was over. Sure, the trail was rocky and muddy and sometimes nonexistent, but we figured it would be smooth sailing for the rest of the day. In fact, as it was after 11 and we had only gone 6 miles, we NEEDED the rest of the day to be easy if we were going to get our miles in.
We took a quick break once we got out of the boulders and into the wildflowers. The wildflowers were everywhere and they were beautiful. (Please forgive all the following wildflower pictures - I just couldn’t resist attempting to capture the beauty.)
The lakes at the bottom of the valley were just as stunning as the wildflowers. I took so many pictures it’s amazing I got anywhere at all.
We hit an unexpected snag leaving the Knapsack Col alternate when the trail went DOWN a horribly long boulder field. Going up boulders isn’t fun, but going down is awful. I’m slow enough as it is going downhill; add huge boulders to carefully pick my way down and I’m unbearably slow, not to mention that there was no trail to follow, just a few cairns here and there (sometimes). My Patrick Duffy leg held up ok, though.
If we weren’t so behind on miles, going down the boulders probably wouldn’t have seemed so daunting and been so frustrating. In fact, it could actually have been fun if I wasn’t so worried about putting us even further behind schedule. There was so much downhill that my resilience faded away and I found myself feeling sorry for myself and crying. However, crying only made me slower because I couldn’t see the boulders very well, so I gave myself a pep talk, wiped the tears away, and continued on. (It also didn’t help that I haven’t had enough food to eat the last few days since I didn’t expect to be out here so long). Thank goodness Nick and I stopped hiking together, I hate feeling like my frustrations make his day worse.
When I finally got to the end of the boulder field, I breathed a sigh of relief. My relief was short lived, however, because there were still miles and miles of downhill to endure. Then there were blowdowns to navigate over. Then I scraped my leg going over a blowdown. Then I slipped off a rock while crossing a stream, getting my feet wet. Then I realized the clip that keeps the water bottle holder on my backpack broke. Needless to say, it was not a smooth afternoon, particularly since I was extremely hungry. I even had a moment when I thought to myself, “this is stupid, why am I doing this? I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Don’t worry, that moment quickly passed and was replaced with a feeling of defiance. How dare the trail think it can get the better of me. :) (I recognized that I was having ridiculous, emotional thoughts because I was hangry.)
There was another frustrating moment when I finally made it to where Nick and I planned to meet - I had to cross a river but didn’t see any solid way across without getting wet. Nick indicated I needed to go a little upstream to get across, so I went up a little, boulder hopped about halfway across, and realized I couldn’t make it. I backtracked and went further upstream, thinking that’s where he meant. Again, I boulder hopped about halfway across and realized that wasn’t the spot, either. I did this a few more times until I said F it and just took my shoes and socks off and forded it. I was so mad abut the time and effort I wasted that I wasn’t the nicest person when I finally got across. Luckily, Nick gave me a hug and some water he had already purified. And, again, I knew it was all because I wasn’t eating enough.
Thankfully, the rest of the day WAS smooth sailing. The trail was mostly flat and mostly rock free and we were able to make up some of the time we lost while on the Knapsack Col alternate. Nick told me to listen to his ManHands CDT Playlist on Spotify, which turned out to be exactly what I needed to hear - the motivating music put me in a much better mood.
We stopped to boil water for dinner around 5, stopped again to eat dinner around 6, and then hiked as long as we could after that to get in as many miles as possible. I find I love hiking in the late evening just as much as I do in the early morning. Even though we didn’t get to camp until after 8, I arrived in good spirits.
In short, Knapsack Col is incredibly beautiful and I already miss it.
Along the trail:
Camp:
The mosquitoes here are the worst they have ever been! It’s incredible, actually.
Pics of tent taken hastily the next morning - I was so tired that I completely forgot to take any pictures that night. (The red light is Nick’s headlamp.)
