Near the Border to Chama

We got up early and were hiking by 6:15 to try and hike while the snow was hard and crusty. It worked for a bit and within a half hour we had found the other guys camp spot. They weren't far ahead and if we had kept going for a bit more last night we woulda joined them with water and a campfire. We all agreed we had made the right choice though since Memphis was visibly tired and beat up and needed to rest. He was much better off in the morning with pants and using a stick to help him on the snow. It would have been nice to have had that fire last night though.

We kept on hiking but by 8:30 the snow was no longer supporting us and we were back postholing. We had about 2.5 miles of snow before we got low enough that we got back to the mud/snow mix which was easier to hike on but made for cold feet.

After 3 miles we made it to the Colorado border. The Maine Man and I had a gentlemans bet going on whether there would be a sign saying we had reached the border. Since we both thought there would be no sign there was nothing put on the line. We were right of course. The only indication we were in a new state was the sign saying we were entering the Rio Grande Forest.

Colorado was much nicer to us then that last stretch of NM had been. There was still a few snow patches we had to hike through but they were all on the north faces of the mountain we were hiking down and were this slushy powder so we had a very easy time hiking down them. Our final stretch to the Cumbres pass where we'd hitch into Chama had a sweet ridge walk where we could see down the valley with the snow capped mountains of our future in the background. It took an hour or so to get a ride to Chama but we managed to talk some folks who had come up to the pass to see the train that runs over the pass, very cool old steam engine, to give all of us, there was 9 hikers at that point, a ride back down.