Pippy and Zippy take on the Colorado Trail: Day 22 Clear Creek to Frenchman Creek

Day 22

Friday, July 25th, 2014

Mileage: 12 miles

Elevation: up-down-up-down!!!!

Alright, so here's a recap of our daily events. First, we go up a mountain. And then we go down. Next, we climb yet another mountain. What's after that? Yes, you are correct...we go downnnn. And how, you might ask, do we have the energy to do this? Well, we alternate between eating a clif energy bar, a mojo bar, crumbled rice chips with bean dips, Justin's peanut-butter cups for dessert, half-pops, a protein bar....and we repeat the cycle again and again until we get to camp. Any questions?

Oh hey Chippy! You have a question? All questions can be answered at pippyandzippy.blogspot.com. Enter your name as the "Secret Squirrel" and we will know it's you. Your identity will never be revealed. Peace out Chippy..

Peaceful morning at our camp in the meadow.

Can you guess who took the morning sunrise pictures? Not Pippy..she was still rising from her cocoon and making her tea.

7:30 AM- we hit the trail as we had a 24,000 ft climb today....whoops! make that 2,400 ( it just felt like 24,000). We rounded the corner from our camp and ran into a group of volunteers who maintain the Colorado trail! And if we had only walked over the little hill 20 ft from our camp last night, we would've ran into them and they told us they would've fed us dinner and breakfast this morning! But instead, we had our dehydrated dinner food and ate our yummy yummy, mushy mushy, oaty oaty, o a t m e a l. Mmmmmm....we have to pry open our mouths and gulp it down....because it's the breakfast of hikers! Oh yeah!

Without the volunteers, there would be no beautiful trails for us to hike on. We thank them whole-heartedly for all of their work and effort to keep the trail safe and groomed.

Thank you Crew!!! One of them just reminded us to fill our water packs because it's a 5 hour 5 mile hike to the top at 11,600 ft (starting at 8,900 ft). Realllyyyy???!

None the less, we hunkered up and inch by inch, made it to the top. Here's some views from along the way...

Look! Zippy's turning into a gypsy. She adds one thing to the outside of her bag every day. Don't ask Pippy why; she has no idea.

View from the top. So breathtaking

Our trail friends were very happy! They worked hard.

Mmmmm....first lunch (we eat two) of tortilla and black bean salad. Delicious!

Zippy checking out the view as we begin our descent down into another valley

As soon as we arrived at the valley floor and started climbing our second mountain of the day, the rain pelted us.

And thunder followed. However, the gloomy sky made for some cool pictures.

Once above treeline past the 11,000 ft mark, the foliage changes and we noticed the black, dark branches with the greenery. It was really pretty to see.

You can see the ominous thunder clouds in this picture. Luckily, the clouds didn't stay long.

On the ridge of Mt. Harvard at the top of our climb. Woohoo! 11,800 ft.

A big open meadow on top.

Once we reached the end of the meadow, we began quickly climbing down, down, down. It's quite irritating going down 500 ft in 20 mins after using every bit of energy and one hour to go up 500 ft. Colorado, where are your ziplines? You'd be the perfect state to zipline for mountain to mountain.

During our climb down, we ran into a horse pack train of riders and wranglers heading down into the valley we just climbed. Zippy reminisced about her good ole days as a wrangler in Colorado as well.