T-3 Weeks

T-3 weeks and counting. Anyone who's been following what's going on on the Continental Divide Trail and Colorado this year knows that it's been a crazy snow-pack year. Not only a big snow year, but a lot of late snow, coupled with a very cool spring. Parts of the San Juan's are still in pretty much winter mountaineering conditions.

Our original plan had been to do the Colorado Trail starting in mid August, including both the Colorado West and Colorado East full Collegiate loop. I'm ready for a break from Ohio and Glide is theoretically retiring from her job this week. Time will tell how many daily phone calls she gets from her former employer to deal with day to day issues. But with that said, we've decided to take a quickie trip to Colorado to get away from Ohio and be a bit of a retirement vacation for Glide. (Isn't retirement permanent vacation?)

So we've decided that while we're out there, we'll do the Collegiate East segment of the Colorado Trail. This will give us a good 70 mile /  four or  five day shakedown cruise to try out our new ULA packs and the new quilt that hopefully (better!) will be done for that trip. This also gives us an opportunity figure out what else needs to be adjusted in our gear before we come back to complete the CT and August.

With less than two weeks before we hit the road. I'm shifting into panic mode with what seems like a million things to do before we leave. We purchased a food dehydrator food dehydrator last weekend at Cabela's (on sale, $50 off!) and are starting to dry some fruits and veggies for the trip.

And our MYOG, two person quilt is still not done. And it's a critical item before we leave. But it will get done as well all the other critical items. And those things that don't get done well, they'll just have to wait.

The good news is the snow is melting fast, especially on the northern sections near Twin Lakes where I was worried about deep and steep snow crossings. But now it looks like the snow will be melted down to manageable levels and we should be able to complete this section without ice axes or snow tracks.

We're both excited. And this should be a fun shakedown cruise for us.