Brian’s Microblog

July 24, 2026

Julie got up a little before 6:00, just in time to say “good morning” to the couple of guys we’d camped near the night before as they headed back up to the trail. I got up a little later. Once again the tent was wet inside and out. I tried again to wipe it down with a microfiber towel but water kept condensing on it - next time a different strategy.

We made hot drinks and had pumpkin bread and poppyseed cake from the Lake City Bakery for breakfast. We got on trail at 8:40.

We hiked up a small but pretty valley with a small waterfall. It was a steep climb up to a saddle. Instead of going down on the other side we followed a ridge around to another saddle and came out on the side of a big, beautiful valley underneath some cliffs. We stopped at this amazing view and ate some Fillo’s Walking Tamales. We’d never tried them before but we will buy them again - a nice change from protein bars.

The trail follows up the big valley, which is a tributary to Cuba Gulch, for a half mile before diving down to cross the valley and climb the other side.

Crossing that saddle brought us to the main Cuba Gulch valley. We could look down the valley to a steep mountainside with a number of old mines on it.

We stopped for lunch on the climb up out of the top of Cuba Gulch. A marmot came out to check on us as we finished lunch.

We walked along a sort of plateau or flat ridge for a bit, then dropped into another valley only to climb steeply up another ridge.

We dropped into another valley with a couple mountains that looked like they had serrated tops along the west side and found a beautiful little creek to filter water from. It turns out this is the headwaters of the Rio Grande River.

We followed down the side of the Rio Grande valley and continued along the foot of one of the serrated topped mountains and came out on Stony Pass Road. The trail follows the road almost up to Stony Pass, but there is a trailhead to the Weminuche Wilderness just before the top.

The trail skirts the mountain south of the pass and climbs a ridge over to Deep Creek valley. Unfortunately a big thunderstorm arrived just before we got up the ridge. We found a tiny canyon and hunkered down with our raincoats and umbrellas for over 45 minutes while lightning struck the ridge above Cuba Gulch several times.

Finally the storm pushed on to the north enough that we could go the last tenth of a mile over to the valley to the south. We were relieved to get down and off the ridge, and eventually it stopped raining.

Far Out said there were campsites and water near a trail junction. We saw some other people camped there but they were coming from the south and had collected water from the other side of a ridge that we didn’t want to go over since the thunderstorm was still close. We found a sloped spot for the tent and set it up not a moment too soon because it started raining again.

We huddled in the tent and made a cold-soaked dinner with couscous and dehydrated vegetables. We watched an episode of Rizzoli and Isles while the couscous soaked, and then while we ate it. It rained for over an hour - luckily the show had subtitles because the rain was noisy. Finally it stopped a bit before 8:00 so we could brush our teeth and pee before going to bed.

13 miles over about nine hours. It was an interesting day because we were literally high on the scenery for most of the day, and then chilled and worried for the last few hours.