24.5 Miles
Saddle Past Thunderbolt Mountain
This morning started off cold. Camping next to water in a valley made it ready tough to get out of the sleeping bag. We made it out of camp an hour earlier than usual though and got to road walking. Not even a mile down was someone's nice vacation cabin as well as a few others as we followed the road up the mountain. The whole area is/was used for mining and some of the property has been sold off and houses have been put up. All the development is rather new and the area was plastered with private property signs.
The road walk turned into a ATV track and switchbacked up the mountain into some young pine forest which was scenic in its own sense. The young dense pine forest thinned out and the trees got larger as we climbed showing signs of a slightly more mature but still young pine forest. The change from young to a bit older and then to a normal pine forest was a neat area to observe the change of pine forest over time just by walking through it. While walking along I scared the hell out of two elk over the course of a couple miles. With an early start and our pace a bit accelerated, Spins and I were cruising though the miles. Towards the end of the day we took a not as seemingly short as it was said to be alternate that bypassed climbing Thunderbolt Mountain. The alternate was 0.7 miles shorter and had less climbing but in actuality the strait downhill and strait uphill were switchbacked adding (and probably surpassing the 0.7 miles saved). The alternate still saved us time and we ate dinner around 7pm with 24 miles done for the day. After eating entirely to much bean and couscous burritos it was a slow, sore stumble a half mile up trail to a decent camp spot.
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