Miles: 22 Steps: 46,230 Vertical gain: Strava Knows Liquid consumed: 128 oz Wildlife: Squirrels, chipmunks, pika, marmot, birds in the wind Faith in Humanity: Met a really nice guy near the Trailhead to Silverthorne. He told me that what I was doing is what our country needs. Don't complain about things, go out and do something, or something along those lines. He was cool. Pleasure talking to you! He also went on a really ambitious hike at 75 years old! Age is no excuse to skip exercise! Another nice day today. Basically the hike today was climb above treeline, hike a ridge for quite a while, then drop way down, cross a stream and climb way up again, spend some time above treeline, then down down down into the town of Silverthorne, CO. Some really beautiful ridge walking today. The trail was quite faint too, almost the entire day, which I really enjoyed. There was just enough tread or just enough cairns marking things to not lose your way too much (I did get sidetracked for 25 minutes total during the day though). I really enjoyed it. Adventurous and didn't see a single person until the last few miles. At the end of the day there was a big question: camp outside of town or pay for a hotel. I was really opting for the camp outside of town, but 4 things happened: 1) the trail got quite crowded towards town making camping a bit awkward 2) there really weren't any good camping spots due to pine beetle kill 3) there were a lot of looming very dark clouds that did eventually stay thunder and lightning and 4) my will power was weak and I just paid for the damn hotel! I was hoping by starting this adventure on the Continental Divide Trail that I'd be able to hike with some other people and split these kinds of costs when arriving in town. The reality?? Hikers are so spread out and in such low numbers that you rarely even see another long distance hiker, let alone someone who hikes the same pace as you so you can hike together. Oh well, doesn't surprise me that numbers are low out here, the CDT is really tough! And for a lot of different reasons too! I love it, personally. Frustrating, challenging, but also rewarding and it does keep people a little bit away and that's a good thing in some ways! Anyway town was nice. I ate a cheap calorie dense meal and then relaxed in bed. I felt a bit guilty about the hotel as I'm sure there will be many more unavoidable hotel purchases later on in the journey, but I'm not gonna beat myself up too bad!