The beginning of the trail sucked today. For about 8 miles we had terrible trail. I'm pretty sure the only people who use the trail are CDT thru-hikers. It probably hasn't been maintained in a decade. It was also a burn area so all the trees were dead. There were blowdowns everywhere, trail was overgrown, mud pits had to be negotiated, uneven surface, etc. It was pretty annoying. But that's the CDT! "Embrace the brutality" is the CDT slogan. It earned it today.
After that the trail widened to almost as ride as a road. It was so nice! Nice to not have your legs constantly brushing against plants.
We came across a backcountry ranger station but nobody was working it.
We turned a corner on the trail and saw a big black bear walking down the trail the same direction as us. We stopped and watched it for a minute and then started following it. It stopped and looked back, gave us a look like "hey what's up" then turned back to the trail and kept walking like we weren't even there. We probably followed it for a good 300 yards. He just kept walking and looking back and never seemed to care that we were following it. Even after making some noise and yelling he didn't hurry his walk at all. It was pretty funny. We decided to just stop and take a break and let it go on down the trail. We didn't see it after that.
It was a pretty long day. About 24 miles. Our feet were killing us at the end. Especially after the early morning trail conditions.
We had our first fire of the trip and that made everyone feel better.
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