We checked into our hotel in Leadville and broke out our hiking gear. This is when Ernie goes to work, picking out the stuff that you get to leave behind. Our goal was 25 pounds of gear per person and no luxury items like pillows or soap.
Ernie has a list and he doesn't let you bring anything that isn't on the list. It's frustrating if you've never been backpacking before because you expect to need these extra things, but as we would soon learn extra weight due to extra gear would be more work than it was worth.
We also put together our food stash. Each person got a ziplock with one handfull of trailmix per day. We ended up taking much more than that because we were able to get our packs under 25 pounds so instead of letting all of that great trailmix go to waste we snuck it in. (Don't tell Ernie)
Then it was time to check out the town of Leadville and get our last big meal before the hike! We were headed into the mountains for 3 days so we were looking forward to a big meal before out hike into the back country.
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