5:00 a.m., Karen’s voice broke the dark silence, “Is it time for coffee yet?”

My right hip was aching from lying on my side, and I sensed a faint lightening of the sky as dawn approached. “Yeah, let’s do this,” I responded. I put on my glasses, headlamp, and puffy jacket, then unzipped the tent fly and crawled out into the dark. I scanned the nearby willow meadow for any moose or elk. I didn’t see anything, so I walked off into the woods to drain my bladder.

I retrieved our food bags from a nearby tree, and before long, the Jetboil was roaring, and coffee was soon to come. Within an hour or so, we packed up camp as the thin clouds to the east began to glow pink and orange. We did some pre-hike warm-up exercises, lifted our packs onto our shoulders, and started down the trail.

The morning sun shone on the treetops, promising the warmth to come once the sun rose high enough to reach our faces. Early morning is a wonderful time to be hiking the trail. We moved quietly through forest, grassy meadows, and aspen groves, noticing fresh elk tracks along the trail. Then Karen spotted four elk as we came up over a hill. After about an hour, we stopped for breakfast, shed our puffy jackets, and enjoyed the sun’s warmth.

The latter half of Segment 5 increasingly opened up to beautiful views of the Continental Divide to the north, where the higher peaks still held winter snowfields. Midday brought some scattered rain and snow showers, and we encountered our first lightning and thunder of the season (one strike was frighteningly close!). Despite the weather, we both agreed that this was the best day of our journey so far. We were approaching the mountains Colorado is famous for. By early afternoon, we reached Kenosha Pass, where we had parked the car three days earlier, thus completing 70.7 miles of Project 491.

~Ptarmiglen