Today I returned to the CDT!  I hiked back over Gable pass and down the other side to the Belly river guard station.  The scenery is stunning. Huge rugged mountains and deep glacier carved valleys. I even managed to get cell service at Gable Pass via Rogers Communications which is a Canadian telecom company. It was good enough that I could send some pics to Barb.

I hung out at the ranger station for a good hour hoping someone would come by and visit for a bit.  I watched several groups of hikers go by in the valley below but none came to the ranger station. Huh. I thought ranger stations were like hiker magnets. They always build them in the very best places and hikers are always looking for a dry porch to take a load off. Not today though.

I moved on, but encountered a lot of mud and very slippery trails. All the horses up here have chewed the trail up into a mud pit in places which requires you to jump from side to side of the trail or to try to balance yourself on a narrow strip of grass alongside the ruts in the trail.

I took a short side trip to the base of Misty falls where I met a thru hiker named Amanita.  We talked for a while before continuing.

Amanita was assigned a campsite at Elizabeth foot with all the other thru hikers but my campsite is at Elizabeth head – another 1.5 miles off the CDT.  Sigh.  BTW – the head is where the creek enters a lake, and the foot is the outlet. Once again, I was the only person in the entire campsite.

The campsite at Elizabeth head was not in a spot I would have picked – it was tucked away in a bunch of low bushes near the outlet, but in the park you have to camp where they tell you to camp. Grrr…. It wasn’t really all that bad and I had my choice of three different sites so I picked the one with the most shade. The day cleared up nicely and I headed down to the lake to wash up a bit. The lake bottom was muddy, but the water was clear if I didn’t move around. I washed up and relaxed in the warm sunshine on a grassy spit of land. I am so amazed at the scenery here. I’ve never seen such a beautiful place. Afterward I returned to camp, ate dinner, and quickly fell asleep.