40: Rollins Pass
Stayed in Winter Park last night and found a delicious breakfast from a cozy Czech bakery.
Easy climb up Rollins (4% grade!). The chunky road made for slow progress down, though with a fun surprise, when I rounded a bend, saw a person walking up the road with two dogs and unmistakable red hair and realized it was my friend Jessie with her pups and a backpack full of beer. The sun even came out while we sat watching trains move to and from the Moffat Tunnel.
After saying farewell, made steady progress climbing back up the next climb until heavy rain set in. I stopped off to wait out the rain. When the rain let up I resumed my slow progress on rocky, slick ATV trails, and passed through the odd collection of cabins in Alice, Colorado. I’ve never in my life seen so many no trespassing signs (or felt so tempted to poach one of the many hot tubs I saw along the way.
I reconnected with the CDT around 7 pm and soon found a campsite next to a creek (unfilterably cloudy due to the rain, as it turned out). Within minutes of finishing dinner the rain picked up again, and lasted through much of the night.
This is an odd section of my route. The CDT proper is high up in the wilderness areas, and my own route is constrained by geography, wilderness, and busy highways—all of which is to say this is mostly a “survival” section to get back to the next section of CDT.
