Tue Jul 3, 2018 @ 05:21

A decent climb, but with a frustrating false summit on the way up, Mt Flora is the mountain immediately East of Berthoud Pass. It was actually pretty well graded climb for the CDT (much better than the abysmal Hope Pass just south of Twin Lakes). The descent down the far side of Mt Flora was a nightmare. We had big grey thunderstorm clouds rolling in, and the trail was built almost entirely on a scree slope. Honestly, one of the most frustrating things on this trail is the lack of switchbacks/trail grading, but someone got seriously switchback happy on that climb down Mt Flora. I lost count but if felt like we did 1000 switchbacks to descend the first 1000 feet. Which when you are hurrying to get off a ridge in front of an impending thunderstorm is not much fun. Further down, as we came around into the valley, there had also been some rock slides that had wiped out the trail as well, so we were scrambling/climbing over unstable boulders the size of my torso/head, in the rain, above tree line. Eventually we have up and went straight down to tree line and walked up along the road. As we climbed around the next shoulder, the thunderstorm hit and we spent a fair amount of time hiding out amongst the trees waiting for the lightning to abate. Colorado had finally delivered the afternoon monsoons we had heard so much about.