Day 05 to Sawtooth Mountain

It was a cold morning and no one wanted to get out of their warm sleeping bags. A hot drink should help get us moving, I thought but soon realized we would have to improvise. Getting the fire going again would take too long. I had our backpacking alcohol stove made from a cat food tin. Not the best for a group of 6 but we had enough fuel to make it work. Hot water with raspberry lemon-aid drink mix was a good opener (that was Cassi and my choice on trail). The boys suggested hot chocolate. We did have milk and left over Hershey bars. I set them to work grating chocolate with their camp knives while I tried not to burn the milk. Coupled with instant oatmeal we enjoyed a hot breakfast before packing up.

Dawn had brought our resupply box that included seven days of trail food, our longest stretch between resupplies. Loading up, our packs felt like lead weights. Even Beckham balked before doning his. Having not finished our trail food during the first 4 days we thought, Are we really going to eat all this? We, of course, did.

We thanked our wonderful support crew as they dropped us back off at Wolf Creek Pass. Climbing steeply we soon entered the Weminuche wilderness. The terrain here differed from the south San Juans. Huge peaks and ridges encircled us, their rugged beauty both inspiring and intimidating. The forest was a green lush under-story punctuated with the standing skeletons of dead trees, victims of a widespread spruce beetle epidemic.

We passed a family out on a day hike. The parents were taking a break on the trail as the teenage son climbed the crumbling volcanic scree 50 feet above."Rock!" I yelled as the son accidentally dislodged a torrent of softball sized rocks one missing his father's head by inches. Cassi and I hurried past. Homo sapiens were definitely the most dangerous creatures on the trail.

We stopped at Archuleta Lake for an early dinner thinking we'd let some afternoon t-storms pass. They didn't. As we headed up the side of Hope Mountain we were bombarded with hail. We sheltered under a stand of krummholz as the heaviest hail hit but it was too cold to sit still for long. The skies cleared just enough to sucker us in to climbing higher on to the ridge. Thirty minutes later the freezing rain hit. We had a late start and had hoped to make more miles but avoiding hypothermia trumped all other concerns. Off the crest of the ridge we found a rocky ledge just wide enough for the tent. Within 2 minutes it was up and we were inside and out of the tempest. "Now what?", we said looking at each other dripping wet and shivering. We carefully removed our wet layers, put on dry clothes and slipped into our bags then the lightning hit. We warmed up and stayed dry through the night. Not yet realizing, we had passed the most dangerous test of the trip.

new plants seen-sculpted puff ball mushroom, dwarf mistletoe, columbine, elephant head, bistort, elk thistle

animals identified- weidenmyers admiral butterfly, white-tailed ptarmigan, Steller's jay, gray jay, cutthroat trout, mt emerald dragonfly