Saturday, August 15, 2009

Continental Divide Trekking

Coupla weeks ago I brought the family out for some Continental Divide explorations, hoping to successfully scout some mtb access to the Continental Divide Trail up in CO. There's a good bit of the CDT running between wilderness areas that is open for use by mtb's, if you can find access, good tread. Well we executed Plan A: only to find our planned higher access trail was blocked with a good deal of blowdown, our lower access proved more wishful thinking than tread.



Plan B that day consisted of meadow napping, wildflower snapping, cutthroat chasing...








There's a few cutts in that meadow, keep yer head down!



So we stashed the bikes the second day, booted up, found our way up a headwater meadow onto the CDT. From there, just a hop, skip, jump on up top of one of the many peaks looking down into Pacific and Atlantic drainages. Wow- pbj/cliff bar lunch served on top of the world, 12,600 ft by our gps!


Smallish squall to the north had us packing up before too long. Not half hour later, that small squall had matured into full blown tboomer, thankfully still centered over the ridge to our north.


Wasn't long however, before the storm spilled over the ridge, urging us to quicken our pace.


Little buddy couldn't take the pace wearing his lowtops, the uneven meadow grass wanted to roll his ankles at every opportunity. No problem, buddy, let me give you a lift-


not gonna beat the rain, troop: deploy jackets!


One thing about those high country storms, they sure move right along. From sunny skies, to tboomer, back to sunny skies, all in 90 minutes.


our vistas gave me some good leads towards better mtb access to the divide, I'm sure to be back before the end of this season!

mjh

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