Sunday, August 16
Today was awesome!! We decided to take an alternate that many CDT hikers take that goes over Knapsack Col. Knapsack Col is a 12,200ft pass in an amazing part of the Winds. Our maps note that this is the most beautiful spot on the CDT. One downside is that fact that it takes most hikers 10-12 hours to hike just 14 miles. Usually we can do 23+ miles in that time. The reason is that it is very steep and requires a lot of rock scrambling. We figured out that we had enough food for a short miles day so we decided to go for it.
The way up was crazy. We were scrambling up boulder fields and passing some cold alpine lakes. It was slow going on the steep slopes. It took about 4 hours to go the 5 miles from camp to the pass. There were glaciers on all sides of us.
We were all sure glad to have 1200 miles in our legs at this point because this climb would have been brutal without being in shape.
We hung out and enjoyed the view from the Col. The Winds are exactly like the Sierras. The same granite peaks and steep walls. The only difference being there are more lakes and glaciers here.
We couldn't have had better weather, it was perfect, no clouds and only a slight wind. It would have been a bad place to be in a thunderstorm.
We headed down the other side and ended up on a small glacier by accident. You couldn't see it because it was covered in rocks and dirt. It didn't have crevasses or anything but the ice under the rocks and dirt made descending a little difficult. We all ended up slipping at some point.
Once off the steep slopes we were in a huge wide open valley. More big lakes along the trail. While Knapsack Col isn't a popular trail for the weekend hikers, the lake we passed at the end of the day sure was. We saw a ton of people. Luckily we found a lake to camp at with nobody around.
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