Ugh. Bad day. It started last night when I decided to cowboy camp. I am carrying an ursack minor that protects my food from all types of non bear critters, when I properly secure it. It has a draw string with a cinch closure to tighten it down. I'm then supposed to secure the neck of the sack with the draw cord so nothing can get out the cinched opening. I was too tired and worn out last night to do that.
Surprise surprise something took advantage of that. At about 1145 last night I felt something walking on my sleeping bag. It felt exactly like my mom's dog so out of habit I did what I always do when I get woken up in the middle of the night by a dog, I kick my feet make some grunting noises and go back to sleep. Only for some reason I can't get back to sleep. Eventually about a half hour later I get up to rearrange my sleeping setup, I was on a very sideways slanting slope, and I notice my food bag is missing. I double check my gear and yep its gone. Then I remember the dog waking me up. Shit. I turn my headlamp on its brightest and start looking around. There a hundred yards downhill are two beady shiny eyes. I immediately think that little bastard has my food bag. I'm not too worried since it is an ursack so it's not like my food is in danger. I throw my shoes on and head down to where I saw the eyes. What do I see there but the plastic wrapper that had my beef jerky in it. Shit. That little bastard was able to get food out of the opening. I look around again and see the beady eyes downhill another 200 yards. This time I go running after it making loud angry noises. When I get to the spot I last saw the eyes I find my food bag. The little bastard is uphill from me by 50 ft or so and I start making I'm going to kill you noises at it and rush toward it. It takes off, right toward where my gear was. I come charging after it and it veers away from my gear finally. I properly secure the food bag and try to get back to sleep. That doesn't work. After two hours of twitching at every sound I finally decide to setup my tent and hope the little tree protects it from the wind. That works and I'm able to get some sleep but only about 2 hours.
When it is light enough I inspect the damage and see it also got my summer sausage, some cheese, and bit into a pair of cliff bars through the bag. That puts me down almost a whole days worth of food. That means that I have to do the Silverthorne route instead of the grays/torres route, a 14k ft. mountain.
It's still windy as can be, to make things worse is about 100 yards downhill is the road, a perfectly flat road, with a spring flowing across it. Whatever I headed up James peak, a 13.5k ft. mountain. On my way up I miss a switchback and follow the wrong trail for a half mile. No big deal except coming back is straight into the wind. So are half the switchbacks going up the mountain. I'm not sure if it was the altitude, the steepness of the climb, or the effort due to the wind but my cough kicked in big time. Between this and the food getting stolen I'm definitely not going up any 14k mtns.
Once I got up there the view was fantastic and there were some sketchy looming clouds out there already. Ley has an alternate that takes you along the divide hiking the next 4 mountain peaks for 4.5 miles. The trail drops 3k ft. down into the valley then climbs back up over 12 miles. The Ley route isn't bad except for the first part that has you climbing a knifes edge followed by a steep talos slope. Then you are up on the divide walking along the ridges on talos. I really didn't want to do the knifes edge in this wind but I also didn't want those extra miles and elevation changes. I saw a trail heading up the next mountain along it's ridge from the valley and thought I might take that to avoid the bad stuff. No such luck. I had to drop all the way down the valley to pick up that trail. At this point I decided to just hike the cdt since it was supposed to be new tread. Many hours later I make it up the other mountain, the one 4.5 miles away, without much trouble.
At this point its 3 pm and I'd done a whopping 15 miles. Whatever I push on. I drop down off the divide cause that's what you do out here hike up big ass mountains then go down them then do it all over again day after day. So after climbing my 3rd 2k+ elevation mountain of the day, I added it up later I gained 9300 ft. and lost 8600.
I was given another choice. I could stay up on the divide where there was no obvious place to camp, the maps just showed steep cliffs for miles, or drop down to a road and add another 1500 ft to tomorrows hike. Luckily right before the junction I saw a nice little spot that was flat, under trees, and had been well used so I camped there and called it a day.
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