I covered only 23 miles day today, so not as long a ride as the last two days. But I had a tricky section of trail where we traversed a place called “knife’s edge” although it was not a true “knife” (with a drop-off on both sides). Instead, there was a wall on one side and a drop on the other, and the narrow track was hardest on Takoda because of his panniers. There wasn’t much room for him to safely walk without bumping against the rock wall on one side or getting too close to the ledge on the other.

The worst part was a couple of badly eroded areas with rock slides that the horses had to navigate over. One particularly bad one Takoda wouldn’t cross on his own, so I had to walk over it with Shyla, tie her up, then walk back to help Takoda get over. I was definitely relieved to get that part of the trail safely behind us.

We stopped for lunch not long afterwards and I let the horses graze while I cooked ramen noodles for myself. A very curious weasel kept poking out of the rocks to watch me!

A few miles later I ran into a CDT section hiker and asked about campsites ahead and he suggested some lakes just off trail where there were still some trees, which was helpful as I knew that highlining was going to be the hard part again since the trail was still so high. His suggestion was good (which doesn’t always happen when relying on others for info) and we got there about 7:30 and had a really beautiful sunset while the horses were grazing on another nice meadow.

#2018CDT