I finally found two men walking down the road. They had been fishing and I felt like God was telling me to give them a chance and ask them if they knew where the Colorado Trail was. Neither did but one of them mentioned that there were people walking on a trail parallel to the road up a hundred feet north. I cut across the forest and quickly found the trail. That was great.
I hiked maybe a half mile and the Colorado Trail CROSSED the road the men had been walking on. I guess they just hadn't seen the signs or hadn't been fishing that far. Once I got across the road, the CT started gaining elevation. I ran into two backpackers and asked them how close I was to Georgia Pass. They said about 4 miles but it was uphill the entire way. That made sense since I had hiked to Georgia Pass from the Kenosha Pass last month. So I headed off. It wasn't too steep because it had lots of switchbacks but I was still huffing and puffing.
As I got close to the pass, there were some storm cloud a few miles away and I had heard thunder earlier in the hike. I quickly tried to get to the point I had reached in June so I could turn around and get back under the tree line. I made it fine about 4pm but I started noticing that I wasn't feeling well on the return trip. My back was sore and my stomach was bothering me. I noticed a certain dizziness. I asked the Lord's help and kept pushing through.
It kept threatening to rain for an hour or two but finally started raining enough that my shorts were getting very wet. I had only brought a rain jacket but no rain pants. It wasn't very cold so I knew I would be fine. The ground was slippery so I was glad I was using trekking poles. They have saved me from a LOT of falls in the past.
About 6:45pm, I got to Tiger Road and decided to take the road back to my car as I didn't want to miss it. Pretty close to 7pm, I found my car. I had covered it with a car cover. A couple people had recommended not taking a 2012 Subaru Impreza WRX into the forest and leaving it unattended so I decided to cover it when I was hiking. It was wet so I put it in the trunk and dried it out when I got back home. I think I knocked out another 5 miles of Section 6. With 12.3 in June and about 5 this weekend, I'm about half way. The rest will be on very level ground so it should be pretty easy.
