Sunday, August 01, 2004
Cross
08/01/04-1
I hope I never have a sleeping spot as bad as the one last night.
It looked OK when it was the best option from the places I'd found, but the reality was that it was lumpy and sloped. Gravity kept pulling me downhill into the low, barbed gooseberry plants.
Although my Therm-a-Rest did not complain, I'm sure it was worried about the thorns too. I had a silent muscle struggle to keep on my pad and to keep my pad under me. Flat and level is good.
The rain did not materialize last night, and the wind did die down. At some point in the morning while I was packing, Spur emerged from the next clump of trees where he'd spent the night.
Soon we were climbing Cottonwood Peak. It turned out to be an easy climb, and I was the first to arrive at the top of the 11,000' peak, which is on the Divide.
The lens promptly fell out of my eye glasses, but the screw was still in the frames, so I was OK. Until I dropped the screw. Into a bed of ground beef-sized rocks. I never found it despite a somewhat methodical search. I thought about my options and ended up using thread to keep the glasses together. A needle, which I lost just as I was finishing, made the repair easy.
We goofed around a bit on top, taking photos.
Our climb to the top followed the Divide, and the Divide continued south from Cottonwood Peak, growing steeper and more narrow. Although it would have been fun to try to climb and hike the Divide, I want to finish this hike, and that means getting in MILES.
If the climb up was easy, the descent was relatively hard. The route to rejoin the real CDT took us down an eastern flank of the mountain. It was steep and loose until it dropped into the forested final third, where the rocks had the effect of marbles in slapstick routines, only it wasn't funny. I managed to fall only twice, and not badly.
Turns out my reconning and maintaining a bearing during the descent was pretty accurate. I came out of the trees pretty close to where I wanted to be. As I took a GPS reading to make sure, an old guy with a GRASS baseball cap came up on an ATV with four work dogs. He told me that he used to hunt "The Mountain Lion" in his youth. We chatted a bit more and as I was departing, he told me that a herd of 100 cattle was on its way down from the mountain. I wondered if he had a cow magnet or something. It's somewhat of a mystery, but I figured it would all be revealed.
I headed to water, something I wanted lots of. Once sated and pumped, I backtracked a bit to get to a large conifer that had enough shade for the three of us to have lunch. Let's see, that would be 4 miles by lunch. Extra adventure sucked the miles out of the day.
Soon Apple Pie and Spur joined me under the tree and the GRASS ATV guy came by again. This time we had trash ready for him to take. He mentioned the cows again. Hum...
Then the cows came, not on their own, but under the direction of a dog or two and two cowboys, only one of the cowboys was a woman.
After lunch I saw what looked like two Solid Gold dancers with huge backpacks walking toward me. We exchanged hellos as we passed. Spur later told me that they were part of a NOLS group. The go-go look was the long gaiters paired with tight short shorts. The rest of the group looked a little more like backpackers, even the ones taking an unnecessary shortcut across the sage landscape.
We had talked about having dinner at Deadman Lake, so I pushed for it. I was getting tired, and at some point Spur caught up to me. We talked a bit. During our walk together, we made a choice to choose the newer of two trails when presented with a choice. It looked to me like they were in transition between the two trails: the older one still had signs, but had sticks and branches blocking it.
Spur and I waited in the shade until Apple Pie arrived. She was in a bad mood because we'd taken the 'wrong' trail. It's true that the new, well-graded trail took us upstream from Deadman Lake, even perhaps as far as a mile. The old trail took a steeper route directly to the lake. She wanted to eat at the lake, but we were not at the lake and she wanted to eat with us, so she was frustrated.
After a terse dinner, we hiked on, intending to get in some miles to make up for the morning. As I climbed out of the Deadman Lake basin, Spur caught up and announced that Apple Pie said we should take the first good spot.
That pissed me off, especially when we came across a spot that had reasonably level and flat spots, but more mosquitoes that I wanted. I announced to Spur that I was pissed off, feeling controlled and manipulated by Apple Pie.
When she arrived, Apple Pie tried to speak with me, but I told her I didn't want to talk about it right then. She's so sensitive that I don't feel comfortable talking with her until I'm less angry.
I sobbed quietly in my little spot in the grass across the trail from where Apple Pie and Spur had their tents set up.
