September 20:In the Marbles

We woke up, ate breakfast, and then climbed out of the tarp to find ourselves in a cloud. We were surprised, because the night before was clear, and the dark clouds were high in the sky. It seemes fitting, and a bit ironic, because the last time we hiked part of this section we were whited out by smoke from the nearby fires. It felt like we would end up with no views of the Marble Mountains whatsoever, regardless of when we hiked it.

It was chilly, but by the afternoon, the clouds had started to break up a little, letting the sun peek through and warm us up a little.

It was really fun to get to see what all the hype was about. We had heard from so many others how beautiful these mountains were, and they were right! The rocky ridges and alpine lakes were incredible. We wove in and out of trees, but for the most part, the trail was rugged and rocky and hard on the feet.

We knew that giving our feet, knees, and legs 10 days off would make jumping back in a little hard. We were hoping that it wouldn't feel like starting over, which luckily it didn't. Our knees and feet screamed at us (we had tricked them into thinking we were done!) for making them walk all day again over such rugged terrain, but it served as a great warm-up for the longer section we still had to hike a bit farther south.

We rolled into Marble Valley in the late afternoon, excited to reconnect our steps for this first section of trail. We took a short break, and then headed down the Canyon Creek Trail that would take us the five miles down to the Lovers Camp Trailhead. My feet told me that I had walked 35 miles, when in reality we had only done 24.

We were hoping that there would be someone there that was heading down out of the mountains that we could snag a ride with. We figured our odds were pretty good since it was 1)a Saturday, and 2)opening weekend of hunting season. Unfortunately, we saw lots of cars but no people. This trailhead is pretty remote, but it seems like it gets a fair amount of traffic, so we weren't too worried.
We wandered down to the parking lot for cars pulling horse trailers and ran into two hunters hanging out by their camper. We chatted for a bit, and they let us sit in their camp chairs (luxury) and fed us some fruit and zucchini bread. They weren't leaving until the following afternoon, so once it got dark we wandered over to a nearby campsite and set up for the night. Our hope was for a ride from someone leaving in the morning. We slept well, section one of the mop up tour behind us.

Total Miles:1630.4
Miles Today:19.1 (+5 mi on Canyon Crk Trl)
Camp 137:Lovers Camp Trailhead

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