Day 76- Forget Me Knot

We had camped just under four miles away from Copper Mountain--a ski resort.  Bo got up early with the plan to get breakfast at the mountain.  We thought that sounded like a pretty good idea and left camp not long after Bo.  We arrived too early--everything was closed.  Instead of killing time for an hour we just hiked on--our real goal was to get into Silverthron by night. 

After walking through Copper Mountain and crossing I-70 (which could have taken us all the way to the AT in Maryland) the trail climbed upwards.  We passed a boyscout group spread out along the climb.  I felt a bit like a celebrity when they boggled at the idea of hiking from Mexico. 

The climb up was a long one, but it only had a little bit of snow on the south side.  This alpine forget-me-knots were growing everywhere at the top of the pass.  I've been seeing them since the northern San Jauns and just love them. 

The north side of the mountain was a fair bit snowier.  We had been doing really good time wise, but the snow brought our miles per hour to a crawl.  Suddenly town seemed really far away. 

At one point the trail turned into a pond. I had wet feet, so I could have just stomped through, but I went around. 

Just before the last climb of the day--we still had eight miles of downhill straight into town to do.  It was getting late, but we kept pressing onwards.  We ended up walking into town at 7 p.m.  We had decided sometime during the day's hike to take a zero--apparently its been awhile since we took one and that took some of the pressure off.