After a lame forced resupply, I had 180 miles to South Pass City to get my resupply box I had bounced from Dubois.
This was the Bridger Wilderness and it was beautiful! Reminded me of the Sierra. I was running low on food again until I came upon some struggling june bugs. These are the hikers with the oversized 70L Ospreys I commonly refer to as “turtle shell diaper tops.” They always have too much food and this guy Rob was no exception. He have me 2 days worth of stuff! Snickers, Lenny’s and Larry cookies, M&Ms and all sorts of stuff.
I was now ready to hit the Cirque Tower Alternate. As I approached I looked at the elevation and knew if I wanted to get my 40 I would have to stay on the CDT- damn was that a mistake. The first 8 miles were flat and plenty smooth until I came upon a massive slowdown section which lasted for 20 miles! Trying to avoid them after 5 hours of hurdles and crawling, I followed what I thought were other hiker paths to game trails which lead to meadows.
No slowdowns here, so I continued only to realize that I was going away south as the trail went north up, over a mountain, along a bridge and down the other side. I was 1.9 miles off trail and it was getting dark. My Guthooks was all messed up again and I had no idea if I could get to a road and take that back to the trail. So I just sent it north.
Over at least 1,000 blow downs and up over and down 2 mountains. I eventually arrived back on the CDT and pushed hard until 11:45 pm and crashed into my tent. The hardest 39 mile day in quite sometime.
I was up early the next day with 19.8 to make it to South Pass City, running out of food with 10 miles to go. But the trail turned into dirt roads through the desert and I arrived at 1 pm. I Got my box, heavy duty rain gear (not messing around anymore) and took 2 hours to eat, charge and prepare.
Only did 12 out, followed by 39.5 the next day and 49.3 after that. I ran out of cigs and food by 8 pm and after finishing the near 50 by 10:30 pm, I had 16.8 miles to arrive in Rawling,Wyoming. Which I did with a 4:10 am start going straight to Taco Bell.
Now on to Steamboat Springs and hopefully in a couple weeks, make it to the San Juans.
✌🥾🤪
