Day 20 to Herrington Creek

The challenge for the day was Hope Pass, a 3000 foot climb that we fortunately tackled early in the morning. It averaged over 1000 feet elevation gain per mile. The average for our trip was 200. We felt like we were motoring when we caught up with another hiker near the top then an ultra runner passed us. He was training for the Leadville 100mile race later that week by running up the pass from the north, descending down the south side, turning around and doing it again. We thought we were crazy.

We dropped down to the Lake Creek valley and Twin Lakes. It is here that the CDT rejoins the CT. In 2009 we had ridden around the east end of the lakes on the CT. We took a short cut around the west end this time (satisfying condition #1 and #4 as explained on Day 19) By the boulders and bridge across Lake Creek we had a wonderful swim and washed clothes then walked the road into town. Volunteers from the historical society gave us a tour of some of the restored buildings from Twin Lakes hey day in the 1890's. The museum was housed in the old saloon/brothel. We retrieved our resupply package from the Post Office/General Store and ate a second lunch at the BBQ stand. Chugging gatoraid we found bottle tops that fit our un-capped water bottles perfectly. Nice to know that some things are standardized. We climbed out of town on old mining roads and regained the official trail.

The long days and miles were getting to Beckham even more than us. He had a skin infection on his nose that topical antibiotics weren't curing. I had some oral antibiotics but I was not sure if they were safe for dogs and we had not been anywhere near a pharmacy for me to get him some different ones. He also was nursing a sore paw. We protected it with a paw cover, gave him Ibuprofen and often carried his pack. He seemed happy but at 9 years old we thought he'd had enough. I called my parents and made arrangements to meet them in Frisco in 4 days to take him off trail.

Rain set in that evening. The trail turned to muck. Beckham lost one of his paw protectors. We decided to turn in. Cooking dinner under an huge, old growth Douglas fir I watched in the fading light as several mt bikers pedaled by. The CT Mountain Bike race had started. The top riders do the 500 miles from Denver to Durango in 4 days. I was glad I was not racing.