Brian’s Microblog

July 16, 2026

We woke up a little before 6:00. It was a bit warmer in this area, at lower elevation, so we did not need our puffy jackets to sleep. We got up just after 6:00 aiming for an early start. We managed to get on the trail at eight.

The trail follows a little-used road up Pine Creek. At our campsite Pine Creek was dry, but about 3/4 of a mile upstream the road crosses the creek and water was flowing through a culvert there. We stopped and filtered a couple more liters because our next water would be about 8 miles further.

The trail (road) began winding up some tributary canyons to get up on the side of the valley for a couple miles. Then the trail leaves the road and goes straight up a hill to get to a saddle. It is quite steep for a short while there.

Once over the saddle the trail joins a different little-used road. That road leads to a well-used forest road, but we turned off after less than a mile on another cattle access road.

In this area is Cochetopa Pass, which translates in the indigenous language to “pass of the bison”. Archeological evidence shows that bison (as well as native peoples and other species) used this pass and other trails in the area to move between different environments that are separated by tall mountain ranges.

The cattle access road goes over a saddle and follows Los Creek down a valley. A north-bound Continental Divide hiker had told us the day before that the water was trickling in Los Creek but there was a side road that leads to a stock tank with nice water. We had planned based on this and so passed up an access to part of Los Creek that had a gentle flow. Unfortunately we either misunderstood, or that young lady has a very different idea of how far out of the way they would walk to get water. After wandering around a bit we ended up digging a little hole in a marshy area where water was trickling and filtered a liter and a half of dirty-looking water to get us to the next source.

The trail follows a road away from Los Creek up to a saddle. We stopped before the saddle under the last shady tree near the trail for lunch. “Energizer Bunny” hiked up shortly afterwards and joined us to eat her lunch. She has done a few other fifty-ish mile through hikes that sounded intriguing, including one around Catalina Island. She left a few minutes before we did, but we hiked at about the same speed, so we followed her at a distance for the next few miles.

We felt a few drops of rain at the end of our lunch and the clouds would continue to threaten rain all afternoon. Once over the saddle the primitive road enters a large, relatively tree-less valley. We did a lot of walking on roads today!

That cattle access / fence line road comes to a county road that we walked for a couple miles before turning off to another cattle access road which is the start of segment 19. Near this turn-off we found our first “trail magic”.

A couple named Marge and Andy who had done the Colorado Trail last year were camping there in their self-built van and wanted to give back. We caught up with Energizer Bunny and Highlighter enjoying the magic. We ate ice cream sandwiches, drank Gatorade, had some fresh fruit, got my phone charged, and dumped all of the three-plus days of trash we were carrying. Plus, they had some Leuko tape to cover some blisters Julie had developed. They also had gallons of water so we refilled some bottles. It was a wonderful, relaxing, surprise and Marge and Andy seem like great people.

We continued on another primitive road and soon it started raining. We got our umbrellas out because it didn’t look like it would last long. Within a half mile or so the rain stopped. We arrived at Ant Creek where Julie had read about a nice campsite. We went a little off-trail to check and there were a couple nice campsites under a mix of aspen and pine trees.

We sat down to do some planning. We had hiked 14 miles already, it was 4:15, and the next campsite with water would be Cochetopa Creek in six miles. Or we could stay at Ant Creek where there is a trickle of water. Or we could filter water at Ant Creek and look for a dry campsite somewhere, although none of the campsites described sounded very appealing. We had arrived at camp around 7:00 for the past couple nights and it made for a slightly stressful evening so we decided to stay at Ant Creek.

I used the water to wash clothes and take a little sponge bath. We spent some time trying to plan out the next few days. If we could arrive in Lake City on a Sunday there is a through hiker buffet dinner at one of the churches there, and lots of hikers try to be there. We thought we’d have to push hard to make it so we decided to just plan to arrive on Monday instead.

We had an “add boiling water” dinner and went to bed early. We heard coyotes in the distance.

14 fairly easy miles over nine hours with ice cream sandwiches.