8/31 Last Day

The morning of the last day Stephie was up first. She was out of the tent sitting by the fire pit with some coffee watching the beautiful sun rise painting the sky from a navy blue to a pale yellow. We hit the trail early, a bit before 8am with dreams of hamburgers, beer, onion rings, and tacos on our minds. It wasn't long before we were triumphantly standing on chair rock taking pictures enjoying the views, and marveling at our tremendous speed. One problem: we weren't supposed to be on chair rock, it was supposed to be visible from the ridge we were supposed to be on to the West, and the trail just ended at chair rock. So we back tracked about 3/4ths of a mile to the road we crossed and saw no sign of the CT, luckily I had service and asked google how to get to Waterton Canyon. It told us to follow the road not even a quarter mile down a small hill and the trail was right there... we lucked out, BIG TIME. Back on track, we cruised down the mountain with out water, as we had dry camped the night before (carried what water we could because the camp site had none) towards the Platte River. When we got there we drank up, yes out of the Platte, but it was still a mountain river at this point, not the nastiness flowing under the 16th street bridge. Full of water we only had about 8 miles or so left, so we pushed on.

All of a sudden right on the side of the trail, next to where I had just placed my right foot, I heard a rattle, and saw a brown flash snap into that terrifying S shape. It was a prairie rattlesnake about the size of your forearm and maybe 3-4 feet long, and it was now on high alert right next to the trail. I told Stephie to STOP immediately! Even though she was probably 50 yards behind me, so she did, then came up the trail within about 10 feet of the snake, still poised to strike and rattling. I backed off down the trail a bit still keeping the snake in view, and he relaxed, laying down and stopping the chilling rattle. He slithered up a hill about 4-5 feet off the trail and curled up under a bush, and I instructed Stephie to quickly sneak around on the far side of the trail, out of reach of the snake. 492 miles of hiking the remotest parts of the Rockies and we see a snake 8 miles from "Denver".

After the snake incident we were both on high alert, and I'm sure our adrenaline was pumping so we crushed the next 2 miles to the road. We ended our hike with a 6 mile road walk through Waterton Canyon, I had saved enough snacks to have one every mile, which was marked on the side of the road with posts. There was also a sign when we got to the road that said: "Road closed due to bear activity. Thru hikers go around, or be aware there are bears in the area." We pressed on, and I asked Stephie if she had ever seen a rattlesnake in the wild, or a bear and she said no. After 3-4 miles of being on high alert for bears, talking, whistling, and just making noise we, or at least I kinda forgot about the sign and was just hiking along, ready for town. When all of a sudden around a turn about 75-80 yards away I saw a very black, very large cat. It was not a cat, but it seems my mind always thinks for a mili-second when I see a bear that it is a cat. It was a black bear cub. I told Stephie to stop yet again, and said there will be more let's hang out here a second. 2-3 seconds later mom came around the turn with another cub in tow behind her. They did not even notice us, as we were upwind, and they were headed straight up the hill. After about a minute watching them clamber up the hill we moved on, passing the 1.5 mile sign, again wondering how we went nearly 500 miles in the mountains with out seeing a snake or bear, but when we get to the city limit we see a rattler, and bear family within 7 miles of each other.

We finished, got our burgers, beer, onion rings, tacos, and macaroni and cheese, the server was surprised that it was all for the 2 of us. What a great trip, but next time we will NOT be on a time line.