Day 72 - Out of the Winds

August 29th

20 Miles

BLM Campground

Waking up at Clear Lake after the Cirque, I kind of assumed the Winds were pretty much over. I also didn't looks ahead at my maps and I was wrong. We spent the morning hiking up to Deep Lake which was a basin of all granite and some thin dirt with trees barely holding on which was a cool sight.

We crossed up and around Deep Lake towards Temple Peak and Temple Lakes. The hike was graded up on the ridge towards a pass between East Temple and Temple Peaks with the huge Temple lake down and to the right. The pass, like everything so far in the Winds, included some rock hopping on steep slopes and then some steeper 'trail' hiking up to the pass. 

On top of the pass was a boulder field you had to hop across to get to the other side where it took Spins and I a quick minute to regain/find trail. The trail was steep loose dirt barley carved on the the side of the mountain and we took very careful small steps down.

The rest of the way down the valley was hiked by following game trails and we took lunch at a lake right before we rejoined with the official CDT trail. Jumping back on the CDT, we followed a dirt road and saw Panama and Beth tracks as well as there signature in a register and we knew they were right ahead of us. We hiked quickly down the road to try and catch up with them until we made it to a BLM campsite where people were out with their RV's for the holiday. We chatted with them and they said that Panama and Beth cut through the woods, through a beaver pond, and onto the 'new official trail'. The old CDT was a shorter, less hilly road walk and I took the advice many nobos gave me when passing them, "when you have the choice of hiking the new CDT or old CDT, always choose the old!" Spins and I ate dinner at that campground and by the time we left it was starting to get dark. There was another BLM campground three miles from here and we figured we'd hike in the dark to get there which we did. The stars were out at night and made for a beautiful scene when we rolled into camp.