Pit Stop

After all of the rain yesterday we had the great idea to get up early and be hiking by 5:30.  Are we nuts?  The idea behind this plan was get our stop in Twin Lakes done and move on to get miles before the rain stopped us.  Well we were at the top of Hope Pass by 630, part of the Leadville 100 ultra race, and down the other side into Twin Lakes by. 9:30.  

Well.  There were a lot of day hikers going up and a couple of people training for the race.  Once in tiny Twin Lakes I got my resupply box from the store.  I have new shoes!  My feet are so happy to be back in Altras with room to spread out my toes.  The Merrells were a bandaid.  They  got me here but they squeezed my toes and already have holes.  They didn't hold up to well.  To our delight we discovered that the lodge in Twin Lakes has a restaurant.  So we loitered til they opened at 11 and then enjoyed a delicious lunch. We met some nice people and ran into old friends as well.  We looked at the sky, at the gathering dark clouds and loitered some more.  Finally we gathered our courage and left town for the trail.  And what a beautiful trail it was.  

It was wide and mostly pine kneed led smooth with gentle ups and downs.  Best of all we got out just ahead of the weather and had blue sky the rest of the afternoon.  The storms finally did catch us at the Mt Elbert trailhead and so we stopped, set up our tents and called it a day at 5:30.  It was a good day.  Two different people offered us a ride to Leadville which is 34 trail miles ahead and our next stop.  It was tempting.  We declined.  I'm proud of us for that.