Perfect day to hike. Calling it quits at wolf creek. CDT complete!
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Indian Creek Junction to spotted lake
What a day. I didn't see a cloud until afternoon. The views were stunning. I kinda wish this was my last day since it was so perfect. I'll let the pictures speak for me.
Rincon la vaca to Indian Creek junction
Grrrr and brrr. It wasn't that cold but I had to cross a swampy bit first thing in the morning. I tried to avoid it Ley said there was new trail that skipped the swampy bit. Well after walking around for 3 miles I couldn't find it so I had to follow the swampy bit. The swampy bit was a valley bottom with a creek and canals through it. On top of that all the grass in the valley bottom was covered in frost. Now crossing creeks and getting my feet wet sucks but is part of the experience. Walking through frozen grass with wet feet really sucks and hurts but it's part of the experience. The thing that pissed me off was the canal. Here was a man made structure and there was no crossing for it. I tried wading across it, so cold, but that didn't work. I got three steps in and was already sunken in the mud down to my mid thigh. Now this swampy bit of trail was the typical CDT follow the posts type of trail. Of course the post that tells you where to cross the canal at a point you can step over it is missing. So I had to hike in frozen wet feet along this canal trying to find a way across that didn't involve me swimming. I did eventually find it and swore at the trail and canal very loudly when I did. Unfortunately it seems there was a section hiker camped within hearing range and he was concerned about me but after explaining the situation he agreed and would have done the same thing. He invited me for coffee but I declined since I had to get moving to make my toes not fall off.
The rest of the day was amazing. The views were incredible. The hiking was tough. The weather was perfect. I took so many pictures of the surrounding area. I even saw 4 moose. I ended up camping on a ridge which had a fantastic sunset and should have an equally impressive sunrise.
Yurt to stony pass
Leaving the yurt was difficult. It was rather chilly outside and there was a nice warm fire
Lake city to yurt
Lazy day hanging around the hostel. I did my resupply at the grocery across the street and it was stocked with almost exactly the way I'd stock it. Needless to say I spent more money there than I should have. The local bakery was also fantastic. I think Lake city is now my favorite trail town on the CDT.
I went ahead and made my airline reservations for 10 day from now. It should only take 6 days of hiking to finish but there will be a day lost in pagosa springs to resupply, and soak in hot springs. Then a day lost getting away from platoro. Then a day lost getting to albuquerque. Which puts me at 9 days. I think. Either way the plane ticket is purchased so I'll be in Albuquerque in 10 days and Maryland 7 hours after that.
I did eventually get around to leaving town and got a ride back up to the pass with a gentleman going up there to pick mushrooms. He was after Chantelle mushrooms in particular and I had him show me one so I'd know what to look for. Apparently they go for $50 a pound in grocery stores. After that I booked it cause I saw thunderstorms on the horizon and knew I'd be exposed until I got to my camp spot. A very nice camp spot in a valley in a yurt. I got here just in time as the storm showed up when I walked in the door.
CDT complete!
I'm done! I'll try to get around to finishing the rest of the posts this time. I'm calling it quits just a little short of the actual finish since I didn't take into account the hours of the car rental place when I made my plane reservations. They are closed on Sundays which would make the timing for my flight not work. That just means I have to come back and hike this section in the future. Which I wanted to do anyway since I wanted to see the section around Cumbres Pass without snow. The only real issue I'm having with stopping now is today was absolutely perfect weather and the next few days are also going to be amazing. Ah well.
Anyway hike complete!
Rock Creek to Winfield
Perfect morning not a cloud in sight. This is Colorado's attempt to get me to climb a 14er. Not just any 14er but Mt. Elbert the biggest mountain in the state and only a few feet shorter that Whitney. But it's not going to work. I decided not to do any 14ers and I'm sticking to it even if it is perfect weather to climb Elbert. I successfully managed to avoid climbing the mountain but only because I didn't have enough water.
After a little while I came to the cute little community of twin lakes. The lakes were gorgeous and everyone in the town was extremely friendly and helpful. They really want the hiker business there. After a bite to eat at the local food truck, they only place to eat, and some cold goodies from the store I headed on. The trail went 12 miles around the east side of the two lakes but there was an alternate that went just 2 miles of roadwalking to a bridge that took me across the west side. Guess which way I went.
After climbing over the southern mountains of the twin lakes valley I headed down the next valley. It was getting late and I started looking for a camp spot. The trail was along a steep valley cliff and there were only about one camp spot a mile. They were all taken by Colorado trail hikers! It got dark and still nowhere to camp. I eventually had to headlamp my way down to the valley bottom taking a side trail. Well that didn't work cause the valley bottom was all private property. Ah well I followed the road up to where the CDT crosses it and camped there. Along the way I walked past yet another ghost town. Not quite as well taken care of as south pass city but a nice ghost town regardless.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Leadville to rock creek
Nice easy day. Got a ride up to the trail from a guy staying at the hostel. A couple miles in there was a cooler full of sodas! I think that's a first for the trip.
Fairly uneventful day here so not much to say.
Friday, September 4, 2015
Silverthorne to a few miles south of Copper mtn
So I took a zero in Breckenridge. There is a nice hostel there where I spent the night in the cheap. I needed the day to get my box for monarch pass ready. I also sent home everything except the bare essentials. My pack is so nice and light right now.
The weather is supposed to be really nasty today and even worse tomorrow afternoon. Taking this into consideration along with the fact that I don't really like hiking when cold and wet I decided to take yet another shortcut. There is a 15 mile bike path from Silverthorne to copper mountain. The CDT is 20 miles but is up and down the whole way. I decided that if I'd hike the bike path and get moving early tomorrow I could get into Leadville before the storms got bad.
The hike along the path was nice. There were restrooms every 5 miles or so and it went right through the town of Frisco where I stopped for lunch. Once I got to copper mountain I grabbed some dinner to go from the local Mexican place and hiked on. I did another 5 miles or so before camping between two passing thunderstorms.
Rogers pass to Vasquez tunnel
Ugh. Bad day. It started last night when I decided to cowboy camp. I am carrying an ursack minor that protects my food from all types of non bear critters, when I properly secure it. It has a draw string with a cinch closure to tighten it down. I'm then supposed to secure the neck of the sack with the draw cord so nothing can get out the cinched opening. I was too tired and worn out last night to do that.
Surprise surprise something took advantage of that. At about 1145 last night I felt something walking on my sleeping bag. It felt exactly like my mom's dog so out of habit I did what I always do when I get woken up in the middle of the night by a dog, I kick my feet make some grunting noises and go back to sleep. Only for some reason I can't get back to sleep. Eventually about a half hour later I get up to rearrange my sleeping setup, I was on a very sideways slanting slope, and I notice my food bag is missing. I double check my gear and yep its gone. Then I remember the dog waking me up. Shit. I turn my headlamp on its brightest and start looking around. There a hundred yards downhill are two beady shiny eyes. I immediately think that little bastard has my food bag. I'm not too worried since it is an ursack so it's not like my food is in danger. I throw my shoes on and head down to where I saw the eyes. What do I see there but the plastic wrapper that had my beef jerky in it. Shit. That little bastard was able to get food out of the opening. I look around again and see the beady eyes downhill another 200 yards. This time I go running after it making loud angry noises. When I get to the spot I last saw the eyes I find my food bag. The little bastard is uphill from me by 50 ft or so and I start making I'm going to kill you noises at it and rush toward it. It takes off, right toward where my gear was. I come charging after it and it veers away from my gear finally. I properly secure the food bag and try to get back to sleep. That doesn't work. After two hours of twitching at every sound I finally decide to setup my tent and hope the little tree protects it from the wind. That works and I'm able to get some sleep but only about 2 hours.
When it is light enough I inspect the damage and see it also got my summer sausage, some cheese, and bit into a pair of cliff bars through the bag. That puts me down almost a whole days worth of food. That means that I have to do the Silverthorne route instead of the grays/torres route, a 14k ft. mountain.
It's still windy as can be, to make things worse is about 100 yards downhill is the road, a perfectly flat road, with a spring flowing across it. Whatever I headed up James peak, a 13.5k ft. mountain. On my way up I miss a switchback and follow the wrong trail for a half mile. No big deal except coming back is straight into the wind. So are half the switchbacks going up the mountain. I'm not sure if it was the altitude, the steepness of the climb, or the effort due to the wind but my cough kicked in big time. Between this and the food getting stolen I'm definitely not going up any 14k mtns.
Once I got up there the view was fantastic and there were some sketchy looming clouds out there already. Ley has an alternate that takes you along the divide hiking the next 4 mountain peaks for 4.5 miles. The trail drops 3k ft. down into the valley then climbs back up over 12 miles. The Ley route isn't bad except for the first part that has you climbing a knifes edge followed by a steep talos slope. Then you are up on the divide walking along the ridges on talos. I really didn't want to do the knifes edge in this wind but I also didn't want those extra miles and elevation changes. I saw a trail heading up the next mountain along it's ridge from the valley and thought I might take that to avoid the bad stuff. No such luck. I had to drop all the way down the valley to pick up that trail. At this point I decided to just hike the cdt since it was supposed to be new tread. Many hours later I make it up the other mountain, the one 4.5 miles away, without much trouble.
At this point its 3 pm and I'd done a whopping 15 miles. Whatever I push on. I drop down off the divide cause that's what you do out here hike up big ass mountains then go down them then do it all over again day after day. So after climbing my 3rd 2k+ elevation mountain of the day, I added it up later I gained 9300 ft. and lost 8600.
I was given another choice. I could stay up on the divide where there was no obvious place to camp, the maps just showed steep cliffs for miles, or drop down to a road and add another 1500 ft to tomorrows hike. Luckily right before the junction I saw a nice little spot that was flat, under trees, and had been well used so I camped there and called it a day.
Big rock campground to Rogers pass
Here we go again. Another beautiful day on the divide. It started out with an amazing view over monarch lake. Which was perfectly still and had incredible reflections of the surrounding mountains.
After a brief climb of a couple thousand feet back up to the divide it seemed like the rest of the day was up on an exposed ridge. Normally a scary prospect in Colorado with its daily thunderstorms, but today I lucked out and it was perfectly clear. The reason it was so clear was the wind. It was a constant 25+ with gusts that had me bent over. Lots of fun when you are walking ridges all day.
Around 5 pm I had to make a decision. The next 8 miles was an exposed ridge with a 13.5k mountain at the end. The only chance for a campsite was at a pass that on paper looked completely exposed. I also noticed some thunderstorms forming and heading right for the peak. The trail went high following the divide along a ridge for 3 miles, easy before dark, or there was a road I could follow that in theory would take me up to the pass, keep me out of the wind and stay below tree line. I eventually hiked the road for a bit simply cause I missed the turn. Nice thing about the road use there was water. I didn't need it but this was supposed to be a 15+ mile dry stretch.
At 630 I stopped to cook dinner and set up my rain fly cause it looked kinda stormy. It didn't rain I did dilly dally doing that so by the time I started hiking again the sun was setting. I climbed up toward the divide to try get a good view for a picture but couldn't make it in time. At this point I was halfway up toward the trail so I kept going. Bad idea, there wasn't a trail just carins. Carins are great in the day when you can see them but at night not so much. Not that it was hard to figure out where to go since to my east was a 1000 ft cliff. That was even more fun since I was stumbling around in the dark with a crazy wind trying to blow me off the cliff and big rocks and grass clumps trying to trip me. I eventually decided I had enough and tried hiking back down to the road. Only it wasn't where the gps said it would be. There was a tree though and an almost flat spot to cowboy camp on, I wasn't sure if it would be too windy for the tent.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Near copper mtn to Leadville
20 by 2. That's one of those magical hiker numbers that means your going to do a big mile day. My goal was to get 20 by 1. This would put me in Leadville before the storms arrived. I saw them on the radar while I had signal yesterday and they looked nasty. I got up and was hiking by 530.
I made good time crossing the first two passes between me and Leadville. I did get delayed by the beauty of my surroundings and a herd of sheep. But I persevered and didn't have a sheep dog follow me for half a mile barking at my heels this time. I made the halfway point of 10 by 10 but then looking at the sky realized that there were no clouds up there to threaten me. I slowed down then. I even contemplated skipping Leadville all together. That thought didn't last since I had been told by some people way back in silver city that the best pizza on trail was found in Leadville. It was good but I've had better, not on this trail though. I also needed to resupply for the stretch to monarch crest and had been told the resupply in twin lakes wasn't good, turns out it was a perfect resupply but that's getting ahead of the story.
I made it to the pass to Leadville but not until 230. I got distracted by some cool ruins and history stuff. I had pizza in town and stayed at the local hostel, which was amazing btw. Did my resupply and waited for the big storms to show, they never did. It seems that Breckenridge where I was looking at the weather did get hit but the storms stayed north of us.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Grand lake to big rock campground
I really need to get better at getting out of town. I didn't make it out until noon again. The hike was a breeze. I just hiked around lakes all day. There was a section which Ley warned that the blowdowns in a 3 mile section were terrible. A thing of nightmares if you will. Luckily for me they had finally cleared the blowdowns out. It would have been bad if they hadn't but no worse than some sections in Montana. It did still take me a while to hike that section but that was because there were raspberries everywhere.
I made it out of the wilderness and rmnp areas finally, both require permits for camping and got to some public campgrounds. There was supposed to be a little old lady that sells snacks, ice cream and makes baked goods but she's getting on in years and stopped doing that this year. I hadn't heard this and when I asked a local about it he gave me the whole story. He also said if I head to the final campground and talk to the hosts there they'll take me over to a ranch that is trying to take over that little business. I went there and talked to the host, Carl, and he informed me that the ranch was out of ice cream! That was the whole point I had hiked out some really good chocolate chip and macadamia but cookies to eat ice cream with. Carl went in his rv and came out with his wife and ice cream. We ate the whole bag of cookies and pint of ice cream, by we I mean I ate most and they had a cookie and a few scoops. Hurray for trail magic!
Never summer wilderness to grand lake
Never summer wilderness is aptly named. That rain I got last night turned into ice. The mountains I had hiked over yesterday were covered in a light dusting of snow. All afternoon hiking yesterday was very chilly. Like late fall temperatures. Ah well that's behind me. Today I go into Rocky Mountain National Park(rmnp).
The trail only does a little 22 mile loop up a mountain before dropping down into the town of grand lake. The thing is there are camping restrictions since its a national park. You need backcountry permits and bear canisters to camp in the park. There is a shortcut that skips the loop and takes you into town after only 4 miles. A lot of people do that. Or they take the shortcut to town and slackpack the loop+shortcut. I wanted to hike the loop but it was going to be a big, 30 mile, day. I had 7 miles of hiking from my campsite to the start of the loop then the entire loop. I was basically slackpacking anyway since I was down to just a lunch and a few snack bars.
I'm very glad I did it. The hiking was cake. The trail was in perfect condition with a gentle climb up the mountain. The way up was along a creek valley with water everywhere including a cute little waterfall. Once I got up there the wind made it chilly but the views were fantastic. The west faces of the mountains still had a bit of snow on them giving a nice contrast to the blue, green and gray of the sky, grass and rocks. The hike back down was a bit steeper but it was switchbacked and again followed a creek with some great swimming holes and cute cascading waterfalls. Definitely worth the time and effort. If I had skipped it I'd have just been lounging around town all day.
The hostel I stayed at was incredible. It was built on a cliff overlooking grand lake and was built to highlight that view. The bunk room wasn't great butI didn't spend much time up there when I could spend it in the lounge.
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