1/8/23
Day Eighty-Nine 

Today was less than ideal (read: sucked). I really didn’t want to go hiking but I knew I had to. Conditions were less than ideal and because of how little snow there is it’s impossible to get good footing or make easy ascents up even the smallest peaks. I put on a funny podcast and tried to zone out. The final ascent of the day was up the yellow trail (in other words, I climbed up Cole hill from two different trails) and as I was making the final push I reached a large group of people (around 8). I thought that they were turning off of the blue trail onto the yellow and that I had reached the junction and could turn around as well. However, I was wrong. I chose to turn around probably about 2/10s of a mile early and decided to quickly check my watch to verify I had reached the junction only to find out I had not. Annoyed, I let the group pass so that I could climb back up the trail and finish it all the way to the junction with Blue trail. In my annoyance I dumped my pack to make the final stretch of trail easier and thought that I had passed it going back down and didn’t notice it (it’s white, the trail is covered in snow = camouflage). This led me to backtracking back up the same 2/10s of trail two times to make sure I didn’t walk by it only to discover it a bit further down the trail. Needless to say I was ready to be done by this point.

Daily Miles: 9.30 

Daily Vert: 2249’

Overall Miles: 958.41

Overall Vert: 274,517’

Trace: 41.4% -> 41.8%

Trails:

Yellow Trail

Blue Trail

Red Trail