September 20th.
Heading down from Hunchback Pass, I got my first sign this was going to be the Day of the Willows. This shrub grows very thick. People who create the trails essentially carve a path through it. Then, the trail becomes a creek. Maintenance consists of cutting it back a bit. Horse riders end up trying to go around because it must freak out the horses.
My hike down Nebo Creek and then up to Mount Nebo was almost entirely a struggle against the willow. Thank goodness it doesn’t have thorns.
Midday the trail went along slightly more level ground. It went around some pretty lakes, most notably Ute Lake. (Utes were the Indian tribe known to live in these mountains.)
Later it climbed around a sort-of famous fixture on the trail: The window. It is a missing chunk of a mountain that looks like a rolled-down window. Before I went over to the east side of the mountains, I looked back and could see snow squalls moving in from the west.
It kept getting colder. I met a young hunter. He said he thought it was supposed to snow. I told him what I had seen. As if on cue, the snow came down.
I had a long descent down to a valley. I crossed a marshy area and ended up at the edge of the valley where the North Fork of the Los Pinos River comes out. I was too tired to hike up the steep canyon, so I slept at the base.
backpacking over the hill 