After first meeting at the Pine Trailhead, we left a car and drove to Trailhead 280 to start our adventure. Starting at 7:07AM we took off to West on the Highline trail. There has been a lot of work done on these trails in terms of clearing, cleaning, or just making completely new trails as well. We would find that this added another 4 miles at the end from the previous attempt.
The first section of the trail is really well shaded and provides plenty of water/creek crossings which we were able to filter our water from. This allowed us to have a full pack of food that we carried throughout the adventure. This shade and H2O continues until about mile 20 where sun exposure becomes a little more prevalent but water stays readily accessable. Even on the sections where we were expecting there to be dry beds, we were still seeing water flowing. A sun hoodie and hat/shirt dips in the streams helped us stay cool and was a perfect choice for this environment. As the day continued and the night fell we did not see a soul out in the woods. We were able to make it to Geronimo trailhead in the daylight, leaving only the last couple hours that we would have to utilize our headlamps.
We were really happy once we wound down the last of the single track switchbacks and saw our car we had parked. The trail has had so much work and effort into it, and it really shows. Cant wait to come out and explore more