Hiking the Colorado Trail Segments 10 and 11: Day 3

Day 3
Surviving the night, we reluctantly got out of our bags and started doing our morning prep.  Guessing, but it was probably 24 degrees.  Our Camelbak mouth pieces and hoses were frozen despite our efforts.  I went down to the creek and filled our water filter bag and it took about 2 minutes before the hose froze and ice started to form inside the bag.  Karl boiled some water and we added it to the quickly freezing water in the filter bag and that did the trick.  After a couple of minutes it was flowing and we had clean water with which to cook.

Planning for Day 3 to be our highest mileage, we got cooking, eating and cleaning as fast as we could.  I stuffed the day’s snacks inside my shirt to defrost and we got on the trail by about 9:30 AM …  Camelbaks still frozen.  It didn’t take long for the hoses to thaw as the temps rose and we got exposed to more and more sunlight. 
Being a Sunday, we saw a couple groups of about 6 hikers on the trail.  They were all in good spirits and one group had been on the trail since the previous Tuesday, with several more days to go.  We also ran into a guy hiking solo who had started on around September 9 in Durango and was planning to hike the rest of the trail to Denver.

Before dropping down to Twin Lakes, we came across a HUGE grove of Aspen trees near Beaver Ponds.  The views were amazing.  Kinda wish we had been there about 2 weeks prior to experience the Aspens in full fall color, but ya get what ya get.
After a few more miles, we hit the NW corner of Twin Lakes.  We could still see plenty of snow on the N side of the mountains towering above us.  As we hiked into the sun light, it not only got a lot warmer, but the views from the lake toward the mountains were spectacular.

It took a while, but we hiked around the East side of the lakes, across the dam and found a great camp site for the night.  It was protected from the sun and the winds that might come across the lakes, but it was getting chilly.  So, we ate a late lunch and chilled on log in the sun, happy to be off our feet.

We really hadn’t been comfortable having one at the earlier camps, but being the last night I started a small fire.  It’s been years since I started a fire.  We had plenty of water on hand to keep it controlled and the drift wood was REALLY dry and went up like straw.  It was nice switch and we used the fire to boil water for dinner and keep us toasty until a whopping 8 PM.  Tired from the day’s activities we retired.