Colorado Trail day 8
July 02, 2026
We slept fairly well. It was chilly but nothing that couldn’t be managed by wearing our puffies inside our sleep systems. Julie got up around 5:30 and I stayed in bed for a little while longer.
There was a big valley to the east of us with a ridge on the other side. The sunrise over the ridge was a bit dramatic because the smoke had returned overnight.
It was a pleasant campsite and a chilly morning, and not a lot of miles for the day, so we decided to take our time getting going. We also had a one or two bars of Verizon service, so I managed to update our blog with two more days (days 4 & 5) of text and photos.
We got on trail at 8:30 and hiked a little over a mile to a creek so that we could refill our water supplies. Then we continued slowly climbing towards Georgia Pass.
There were expansive views as we neared the pass, but the views to the north and west were hazy with smoke. This is the first major mountain pass of the Colorado Trail southbound so it felt like a big accomplishment.
After the pass we had a gentle descent for several miles that quickly went into a Lodgepole pine forest. We finished listening to The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley, an audiobook we had been listening to for several days. We enjoyed the mystery and the story, although the narrative jumps back and forth in time a bit too frequently. We stopped for lunch and made curry chicken salad (based on a Chef Corso recipe) on crackers.  After a few miles, it got very rocky and pretty steep with some tough footing.
At the bottom of the valley, where we cross different forks of the Swan River several times, we were surprised to see a huge dog kennel area. It looked like there were a number of sled dogs.
We stopped to set up camp at about 4:00 in an area with several campsites near the North Fork of the Swan River. This river will be the last water available for several miles as the trail goes up and over a ridge south of the Keystone ski area then towards Frisco and Breckenridge.
Probably because of the water situation there were several other people camping in the dozens of sites.
We made some African peanut soup using instant sweet potatoes, peanut powder, and peanuts with spices (another Chef Corso recipe). Then we filtered a whole bunch of water so that we could get an early start tomorrow. We switched to using our backup water filter and it is so much faster than the one we had been using – we will just have to replace that one.
While down at the water we talked for a while to a young man and woman who had met on the Appalachian Trail and were two months into hiking the Continental Divide Trail. They were carrying a funny combination of minimal gear along with some impractical souvenirs from the journey. It was unclear if they were a couple or just hiking buddies, but he had gifted her an old Colorado license plate that was strapped onto her pack over her waffle pad.
A bit under 11 miles in about seven and a half hours, total ascent 1600 feet total descent 2300 feet.