I packed up camp this morning and continued following my Colorado Trail detour. I was grateful to have this as an alternate, and since I had traveled this route in 2017 when I rode the CT from Denver to Durango, I was familiar with the territory, although that also meant that I was sorry to be missing new scenery on the CDT. Still, it was good to know that I had another way to get where I was going, and later the CT and the CDT merge and share the same track, so I knew this would definitely take me where I was going anyway. The down side is that some of this section incorporates road walking, which is never Shyla’s forte, and we passed through Princeton Hot Springs as quickly as we could to get to the trail again on the other side.

I was riding just east of Buena Vista, CO, through some well-maintained trail, so we made very good time, and it felt good to make up for some of yesterday’s delay. The last part of the trail is quite pretty, passing through groves of aspens, and it was in one of these groves, on Forest Road 273, that I met up with my mom again, who had driven down from Leadville to camp at the trailhead for the CT there.

It was a lovely campsite that even had some grazing for the horses, although the abundance of grass also meant we were in cattle country, and we once more woke up to be surrounded by a herd attracted by the horses’ food and water!

#2018CDT