Brian’s Microblog

July 01, 2026

We slept well this night. It was a good 10 or more degrees warmer than the previous night, but we were about 1000 feet lower. Neither of us had to put our coats on under our quilt/sleeping bag and we felt comfortably warm until around four in the morning.

Julie got up around 5:30 but I fell right back to sleep and didn’t get up until sometime before 6:30. We had some nice hot drinks, split a Protein Puck, then another round of hot drinks. It was quite chilly initially but, as we started packing up and brushing our teeth etc, it began warming quickly.

We hit the trail at 8:20 and had about 3 and 3/4 miles to hike to Kenosha Pass, where the trail crosses Highway 285. We had sent some additional instructions to my dad last night to bring a few things more than the box of extra food and spare equipment that we had left with him.

We met up with my dad at about 10:30.

We did some laundry in a little bucket that my dad brought up and then traded out some gear. I got rid of about a pound and a half (we felt we no longer needed the bear spray, and I decided to go without the short sleeve shirt and cooling sleeves) and added a half a pound (rain kilt and rain over-mitts). We resupplied with a bunch of food and we were unable to resist taking some extra food that we did not need immediately, but that would be very hard to find in most stores. This made our packs several pounds heavier. Then we ate half of the giant sandwiches that my dad brought from Jersey Mike’s Subs. We got back on trail at noon and started trail segment 6.

Someone(s?) had collected downed trees and created dozens of cones or teepee-type constructions near the first mile or two of segment 6.

We walked a couple of hours and stopped for lunch where there was a nice log in the shade in an aspen forest. We ate another quarter of the sub sandwiches. For dessert we got out one of the items from our Yum box which was a durian cream wafer cookie. It smelled bad as soon as the package was opened! Julie couldn’t eat it because it tasted like a weird mixture of onions and fruit. I ate it just because I didn’t want to have to bury it somewhere, and it was a wafer cookie.

We continued on, up and over a ridge to Jefferson Creek. We stopped to rest, filter water, and decide our strategy for where to camp in order to get to Breckenridge on July third. From the creek the trail will climb 2000 feet in 5.5 miles to Georgia Pass. There is a water source about halfway up the hill, then no more until we drop most of the way down the other side. We saw on the Far Out app that there is a camp site about a quarter of the way up.

We found one nice looking camp spot and I had started unpacking, but Julie noticed several dead trees that were poised to fall on the tent site, so we packed up and went another quarter mile and found an awesome spot with an amazing view.

We arrived at that camp at 7 PM. 12 miles over 10 1/2 hours with 2400 feet ascent, but with a long break at Kenosha Pass in mid morning. We made a simple dinner of tortillas wrapped around almond butter, peanuts, and dried pineapple, then went to bed shortly afterwards.