Good Luck Brent!

We ate breakfast at the W Cafe, where there was lovely fresh coffee, big biscuits, and really good stuffed hashbrowns. I rented a little car at the airport, and then we spent the rest of the morning running errands that were necessary for Brent to continue on alone. I dropped him off back at highway 114 at about noon. I wished him well, and sniffled a bit, and he set off for Creede.

I drove back to Denver (it was a beautiful drive out of the mountains!) and dropped off my rental car at DIA, where Dad picked me up. I was back at home by 8 pm. Now let's see if we can straighten out this job thingy.

kim

Kimless :(

The walk after Kim dropped me off at the trailhead, around 12:30, was a pretty easy grade through lots of open parks (including Sagauche Park, which stretched on for many miles). I met another CDT thru-hiker, Bob, who pointed out an alternate route to get to the top of San Luis Peak (a 14er), and gave me Yogi's map of the town of Creede. I figured if I got in over 20 miles today, I'd have enough time to climb a 14er and still have a chance to get a ride to Creede the next evening.

I camped in the Cochepeta Creek Valley - not the best campsite, being in an open meadow full of bugs, and likely cold and wet, but I needed to get to water, since this was I dry stretch. I got there about 8:30, and quickly discovered that I'd left the bug spray with Kim!

Brent

Kim Quits the Trail!

We slept late today, but the morning was warm and sunny. We had about 6 miles left to highway 114, and we were so sick of granola, we just skipped breakfast and ate breakfast bars. So by the time we got to the road, I was good and cranky. We had heard of some trail magic (a soda cache!) by the highway, but as we walked further and further from the highway I got crankier and crankier, and Brent just kept going! I figured that we had missed the cache, or it had been removed, but Brent had noticed another road that had begun paralleling the trail. Eventually, we found the cache (thanks Burnt Foot!) and I was forced to eat my grumpiness (and some granola). After a long break, we hiked on.

But the highway crossing made some wheels turn in my head. Brent told me that somewhere down that road was Gunnison, and I knew that Gunnison was a much larger town than Creede. Our research from earlier town stops showed that there were no real transportation options from Creede. No regional transit, no buses, no cabs, no car rental, no train. Gunnison at least has a regional airport. Now, maybe I haven't really mentioned it in this blog, but I'm in the process of getting my old job back at ADP; one of the hiccups has been that I need to get a drug test, and all of the labs that I can go to are in, you know, cities. And I have to go get the test done within 48 hours of getting the offer of conditional employment. Previously, the plan had been to get into Creede, then hitch somewhere bigger, like Alamosa or Pagosa Springs, then try to get to Denver or Colorado Springs from there. But both of those places are over 60 miles from Creede, a long hitch. And then we aren't even there yet, we're just out of Creede! This had been bothering me for a while. I wasn't sure when the offer letter would come, and all of the hitching and transportation just seemed a little shaky. So I mentioned to Brent that it may be better for us to try to hitch into Gunnison, where we know that there's an airport, so probably a car rental, or at least more options. He thought about it for a while, and then we both sat in the middle of the trail and had a long discussion about our options.

Eventually I managed to convince Brent of 2 things: 1) Gunnison is a more dependable place for me to try to get back to civilization from, and 2) really, he'd have a better time hiking without me. So we hiked back to the highway (we had actually gone about 4 miles before we stopped) and plopped ourselves and our packs down on the wide shoulder, and stuck our thumbs out. We were there for about an hour before Art from Grand Junction picked us up. He was awesome! He runs a hotel in Fruita, and told us all about the time he lived in Fiji, and offered us a free stay if we were ever in his neck of the woods. He dropped us off right at the airport, which did have a car rental. The rental counter was closed, so we walked back and found some dinner and a place to stay. We spent the night at the ABC Motel, where they were really nice - they actually drove us out to the laundromat and picked us up!

kim

More Hikers!

Since we joined up with the CDT again, this seemed to be our day for meeting other hikers. We met a couple of CT section hikers on the top of Sargent's mesa, and a CDT thru-hiker named Byron (or maybe U-haul). Later in the afternoon we ran into Cruiser and Reason, who hiked the PCT last year, but were ahead of us the whole time. They actually finished at nearly the same time as Mercury (remember him? we always wondered!). Apparently they all finished on September 17th. Once they finish the CDT, they'll be "Triple Crowners," that means that they'll have hiked all 3 major North-South trails: the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. That's about 7,928 miles. Their blog is here. We also met one other hiker, later in the evening. We chatted briefly, and it turns out that he's hiked/climbed all of Colorado's 14ers and 13ers! That's 638 peaks! Wow!

The mosquitoes have really picked up over the last few sections. Today they were landing like snow. I'd even treated my clothes with permethrin (a mosquito repellent treatment)before I left, but they didn't really seem to care.

Brent had a rather noisy altercation with a squirrel as he was making dinner. Apparently the squirrel didn't like his choice of dining locations, and started pelting him with pine cones. Brent threw a stick back at the squirrel, but really, who can hit a 6 ounce rodent in a 4o foot tree? We still ate dinner there, but I think the squirrel won.

kim

Still full of pizza, but leaving Salida

After a lovely waffle breakfast, Jon (our host at a Simple Lodge) agreed to take us back up to the trailhead this morning. We were very grateful, since it was such a hassle to get down yesterday! We arrived at the trailhead around 8:30, and began a series of steep climbs to gain back the altitude we lost leaving the Divide. A lot of the rest of the day was ridge-walking, high and dry, and really impressive views. And, of course, just because we said we probably wouldn't, we did completely lose the trail once. It was on a tree covered, snowy hillside, and we had to hike straight up the hill (mountain, really) through cold, boggy snowmelt to find it again. Cold, wet shoes, but at least they had time to dry out.

Another noteworthy thing today - the weather. We could see the thunderstorms all around us. 360 degrees of unpleasant looking weather, at around 12,000 feet even, but we never got rained on. It was amazing, and made for really neat cloud formations.

The Colorado Trail joined up again with the Continental Divide Trail for about the next 130 miles, maybe we'll run into someone we know!

We took a bunch of pictures today, so I'll just put a bunch here:



kim

Salida

This was a particularly short section of trail - only 6 more miles into Salida! The hike in was uneventful, and we got to highway 50 in pretty good time. Our first hitch was fast, but he wasn't going all the way into town, and dropped us off still about 5 mile outside of town. The second hitch was more of a problem. We ended up walking about 2 of the 5 miles, and had even given up on sticking our thumbs out, when a car stopped. Someone who worked in the Mt. Princeton Resort store, who we had actually met a couple of days earlier gave us a ride the rest of the way into town! He dropped us off at the post office, so we could pick up our resupply, and we went off to find the thing that we'd really been missing on the cold, rainy trail - COFFEE. We found it at the Simmering Cup Coffee shop, and then went off to find a place to stay.

As we were wandering around downtown Salida, I saw a big sign on the Steamplant event center that read "Welcome Governor Bill Ritter." No sooner had I read the sign aloud to Brent then an Escalade pulled up, and Governor Ritter got out! We were going to go up and talk to him, mention that we were CT hikers, and that it was great, and he should keep up the funding, but instead he started talking to a bunch of skaters who were hanging around. There was a heightened police presence around the Governor, and soon we started to feel a little self conscious and dirty, so we left without talking to the big man.

Of course, it being the trip that it's been, it soon started to rain - heavily. We ended up staying at a Simple Lodge (website here), which is more of a hostel than a lodge. But it's a great place, Jon let us check in early, so we had nearly the whole afternoon to clean up, sit around, blog, etc. It's also a very hiker-friendly place, so before long, we met Eric, who is also hiking the CT. He works at REI, so he's a really well geared hiker. He started on the 14th, and has been a day or so behind us for a while, so he's going really fast!

In the evening we wandered around downtown Salida some more. It's a much art-ier town than I expected; there are galleries and sculptures everywhere (including my favorite, a bronze cow on the roof of the building across from our hostel). They're prepping for this weekend's art-themed festival, the Salida Art Walk. Brent picked up a growler of beer from a local brewery (Amica's, website here), and a MONSTROUS pepperoni pizza, and we ate until we were ill. It was awesome!

kim

Leaving Mt. Princeton

Did I mention that the beds at Mt. Princeton were really comfy? Nice squishy pillows and thick comforters...thus, we slept really late. Dragged ourselves out of bed for a humongous breakfast in the restaurant, then rolled ourselves back up the hill to pack up and take off. Everything takes longer when you're so full you can't really function, but we still managed to be back out on the trail by 11.

The trail takes you along Bunny lane (we were going to hop down Bunny lane, but we were still to full!) for a while, which wanders around a little on the valley floor along Chalk Creek. We saw lots of cute little B&B's and (not so little) rental cabins down there. The climb out of the Mt Princeton valley was sunny and hot, but there were really impressive views of the Chalk Cliffs towering on the sides.

It started raining around 1:30, and kept dripping for most of the afternoon. We could see Mt. Shavano (a 14-er) for a little while, before the clouds set in. Wildlife for today was a grey owl in an aspen grove, and a herd of cows in a later aspen grove. The owl was obviously the cooler of the 2, but the cows stood still for pictures.

At camp in the evening we realized that we must have left Brent's little photon headlamp in the room at Mt Princeton. I'm kind of sad about that, it was carried all the way on the PCT! Then, of course, it started to rain again, so we had to scramble to finish dinner and get everything stowed before it got wet. A quick note - just so you understand how ginormous our breakfast was, we weren't even less full until 4 pm. We ate 2 meals today, and at dinner we weren't even hungry, we just knew we should eat! It was a really big breakfast.

kim

p.s. another quick note - I mentioned in the last post that Nathan and Janelle sent us swimsuits? It was actually a whole care package, with snickers bars, flip-flops, and Emergen-C drink packets. It was great! We even got pack mascots!

Mt. Princeton Hot Springs

We got in enough miles yesterday that today is allowed to be pretty mellow hiking day. Mostly downhill, gradual descent. The morning is hot and sunny though, making for sweaty hiking. This side of the mountains is much drier than what we've been going over previously, so our snow worries should be over. Hallelujah!

As the morning wears on, we get some nice views of the Arkansas River valley, and in the early afternoon, we found a random deer carcass left by a hunter next to the trail. EW.

There are more trail registers in this part of the CT. Through careful scrutiny of said registries, we've counted only 2 thru-hikers ahead of us. That plus the 3 plus 1 biker behind us makes only 8 of us total; we're part of an exclusive club!

We arrived at Mt Princeton Hot Springs Resort at about 4 pm, and, holy cow, is this place different from when we were here several years ago. It has grown hugely (website here), it has cabins, the main lodge has been remodeled, and they've added new pools. As we were hiking in, we went past a building that we thought looked like a shabby roadside motel. We ended up staying in the shabby roadside motel, and we opened the door to a 5-star hotel room; vaulted ceilings, patio, great beds, really nice. Joyce at the front desk was terribly sweet, and even got us some laundry soap so we could clean up our stuff a little. Janelle and Nathan even sent us swim suits, so we could go for a soak! The creekside pools were closed due to massive spring runoff (apparently, they couldn't find the pools), which was disappointing, but understandable. We relaxed all evening, vegging out by watching Wall-e again. It was a highly successful evening.

kim

Up and up and up and up...

Today was hard. Brent says it's all in my head, but I still say it was hard! There were 2 2,800 foot climbs today. We only did 20 miles, but they felt long.

Today we were in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. Brent has been here a couple of times before, once with Scott, and the fabled "lost in the wilderness, and Janelle has to play tomorrow!" trek with Janelle and Nathan. We didn't have many views today, because tree line is high here (we were at 12,000 feet, and still in trees!), but the few times we could see there were views of Harvard, Yale, and Missouri peaks. In the afternoon, we took a long break by North Cottonwood Creek, because I was tired. We camped at about 10,500 feet, after our 3rd climb of the day, in a forest of live (!) ponderosa pines. Quite a treat!

kim

Leaving Twin Lakes...

We were finally able to get some laundry done during breakfast. We were a little worried that we'd end up leaving without having done it...GROSS! But it all got done and everything was fine.

There were several CDT thru-hikers at our B&B: Sam, Robocop, and Mr. D. We ate breakfast with Sam and Mr. D joined us later. Sam is planning on going to law school right after he finishes the CDT. We tried to persuade him to give himself some lay-around time. He gave us a whole sleeve of oreos! After talking with all the CDT hikers (who have already come through the San Juans) Brent decided that it was safe to send our ice axes home, so we did, along with the random extra stove we found. We left Twin Lakes by 11:30.

It was a really warm, sunny day! Brent pointed out the dam that we got in trouble for being on several winters ago with Sam (the sister, not the hiker). The CT winds most of the way around the reservoir, then angles back up over the ridge. We entered (and eventually exited) Clear Creek Valley, where you could see 3 14-ers on the opposite side.

And I found a huge puffball mushroom today! Upon later research, we found out they're supposed to taste like either tofu or melted cheese (big difference...) depending on who you ask. We didn't grill it up to try it, though it sure seems like it could have fed us for the night!

Our wildlife quota for the day was an elk and a wild turkey. Also, if you recall, early on in the PCT blog, I had a huge nosebleed and had to carry around a bag full of bloody tissues for a few days. This time it was Brent's turn, as his head exploded in the middle of the trail, and wouldn't stop gushing blood. And I still had to carry the bag o' hemorrhage! EW!

kim

Back on the Budweiser

We woke to the not-very-promising sound of rain pelting on our tarp. Isn't this Colorado? Where it's supposed to be dry? But by 9:00 it had cleared up, and it was actually a very lovely morning. We have to make good miles today, about 23 miles, because of yesterday's rain delay.

We've obviously entered a different climate zone - the trail today goes on the slopes of Mt. Massive and Mt. Elbert, at 11,000 - 12,000 foot elevations, but there's no snow to speak of. What there are, are HUGE aspen groves - the mountainsides are covered in them, and it seems like we hike for miles through continuous aspen forest. Aspens groves have such a nice light and beauty to them. Especially when it's not raining....

We met our first CDT thru-hiker today - his name was San Gabriel - and of course he made me jealous. It was kind of funny, this guy came walking down the trail, and he was wearing my pack, carrying my brand of ice axe, and even used old Powerade bottles for water, just like I do. I must be meant to be a CDT hiker! We talked for a while - he entered the San Juans on May 31st - way early, and said, well, there was a lot of snow. He described going over the knife's edge (Janelle and Nathan will remember that portion of trail from our CDT hike a few years ago) - it sounded pretty hairy, being completely covered in snow.

We ran completely out of food, so we had no choice but to make it into Twin Lakes for dinner (there was some doubt as to whether there'd be a restaurant open for dinner, but luckily there was). We got to Twin Lakes around 6:30, found lodging at the "Inn of the Black Wolf" a restored (somewhat) 130 year old lodge. The floors were so warped our bed slanted in 3 different directions! But we had a nice hot shower, ate a steak at the Inn, and I had my first trail-side Budweiser. Something about long hikes and cheap beer, I don't know what it is.....

- Brent

More Rain

We slept late this morning, but it was really grey and chilly. I, of course, am feeling mopey and want to go home. Brent tries to cheer me up, but I am still mopey. Passed the Continental Divide cabin (another 10th Mountain Division cabin, website here), it's denizens were the only people we saw all day!

The trail goes up and up to about 11,000 feet, and then we walked straight into a giant snowdrift. And it started to rain and rain and rain. So we ended up setting up the tarp in the world's most uncomfortable camp spot. The rain lasted for about 2.5 hours, then it lifted a tiny bit, and we made a run for it! Toward the top of the pass, just after we got past the snow, we found a stuffy bag on the trail, it had a stove, a small fuel canister, a spork, a windscreen, and a stainless steel mug in it. Not the lightest accoutrements, but since Brent has been worried about our fuel consumption, it's very useful! We'll use up the fuel, then ditch the canister and the mug at the next opportunity.

Camped sort of late, but still felt okay because of the forced 2.5 hour break. Slept to the sound of rain on the tarp...

kim

The curse of the broken trekking pole.

We were on the first bus out of Frisco to Copper Mountain. Who should we find there, but Roger (our first other thru-hiker). We chatted for a bit, but he wasn't going all the way to Copper.

Today was a hard day. There were miles of snowdrifts, and we were at the highest elevations we've been at so far. By 4pm we'd only gone 12 miles. We did see a big snowshoe hare outside of Copper Mountain; his summer coat hadn't fully come in, so he was a big brown bunny with humongous white feet. We passed Janet's cabin (of the 10th Mountain Division hut system, website here), and just had to take a look inside. It's really nice, and HUGE. Past there, we had a looooong alpine traverse, which would have been great fun on snowshoes, but which was sort of painful in sneakers with packs on. This was where Brent broke his second trekking pole in a snowdrift. He's been through 3 of them now (1 broken before the PCT, 1 lost in the South Kings river in CA, now 1 broken in a snowdrift). We also hiked past Cataract falls in the late afternoon. The guidebook says that you shouldn't miss the chance to stand under the falls and clean off, but there was so much water coming down that was clearly not an option. Snowmelt has been late, but it's definitely well under way now. We couldn't even get close to the falls, it was so flooded.

By the end of the day, we had done 19 miles, 7 of them since 4:00. A loooong day.

kim

On to Copper Mountain...

We caught the first bus out of Frisco at about 6am to head to the trailhead (isn't that great? there's a free bus that takes you to the trailhead!). There's a lot of elevation gain today, so we wanted as early a start as possible. We passed another couple of Colorado Trail thru-hikers in the morning (a couple of guys from Portland).

There were a couple of pieces of gear that we weren't sure we'd use, the ice axes and the GPS. Today we were glad we had both of them. The trail was covered with snowdrifts in many places. The easiest thing to do was to key a waypoint into the GPS and then walk in that general direction (over the snowdrifts, while using the ice axes, of course). At one point the Portland hikers passed us, and asked where the trail was. We pointed out what we thought was correct, and they set off. We followed their tracks for a while, then decided that they were angling too far down the mountain (useful GPS thingy!). We realized later that they were actually headed for the wrong ski resort! Copper mountain (our destination) was actually over the ridge. They were heading straight for Breckenridge.

We crested the ridge of the Tenmile Range, and finally saw our real destination. There were also great views of Mt Massive and Holy Cross. The way was much clearer on the windward side of the mountain, so we were able to get into Copper at about 5:30. Rooms were expensive there, though, so we just took the bus back to Frisco for our third night there. We stayed at the Snowshoe motel, which was very nice. Frisco was preparing for a BBQ festival over the weekend, so there were meat smokers lining the old-town area. They smelled really good, so it was sad that we'd be leaving so early in the morning that we couldn't eat!

kim

First Zero Mileage day...

As you may have guessed, we spent the day in Frisco. Mostly updating this blog, running errands, and taking care of various business. Brent did some weird stuff with the mileage calculations, and we magically turned out to be a day ahead of schedule. Can't have that, so early in the hike, so we slacked a day!

We stayed at the Frisco Lodge (website here) which is a really nice bed and breakfast-y type place.

Frisco is a nice town!

kim

Into Frisco

We were visited by a hungry pine marten as we were eating breakfast this morning. He was very persistent, and didn't run off until I threatened him with an ice axe. Doubtless he would have enjoyed our granola more than we did. This isn't our guy, but this is what he looked like.

We rediscovered the joy of cold, wet clothes - our shoes had frozen over the night, and our shoelaces were stiff with frost. It becomes a lengthy process to tie frozen solid shoelaces with cold hands that don't work right!

As we get closer to the I-70 corridor, there's a lot of beetle kill in the area. The increased sunlight, combined with all the moisture we've been getting, seems to mean a lot of mushrooms. Kim found a bunch of golden mushrooms that were quite cold to the touch, much colder than the ambient temperature - and she also found an actual morel mushroom - I think that's quite rare in Colorado!

The morning cleared up after a while, and was quite nice. We could see Keystone and Breckenridge ski resorts come into view, and we arrived at the town of Frisco around 4pm (the Colorado Trail goes right through several subdivisions on its way into town, which is very strange)

We met Kevin, who is thru-biking the Colorado Trail (what he can of it - bikes have to detour around all the wilderness areas). He managed to get through the snow on Georgia Pass too, amazingly. He said it took him 13 hours of hurling his bike from one snow drift to another to get through. He sounded exhausted...

Brent

Our first serious snow

As we were departing our lovely campsite, we met Roger again this morning - turns out he's taking photos for the next edition of the Colorado Trail guidebook. He promised us fame, glory, and riches, as well as an appearance in the next edition. Of course, he only took pictures of our backs as we were looking at scenery. I wonder why that could be??

We got our first taste of what the snow situation is going to be like as we gained the Continental Divide for the first time today.

The snow wasn't so bad as we went up, at least it was mostly avoidable. And when we got to the divide, it suddenly cleared up, and we were standing in the only visibly sunny spot for miles - it was kind of neat, you could see the storms all around us. But on the way down, we had 4 miles of postholing through deep, deep snow.

It took us most of the afternoon to get through that four miles,

before we found a dry spot by a small pond, still kind of surrounded by snow. We had cold, wet feet,

and it was raining/snowing steadily through the afternoon, so it was definitely a setup the tarp, get into dry clothes, and cook a hot dinner from the comfort of our sleeping bag. It was actually kind of cozy... (at least by some twisted measure)

We discovered that, by some happenstance, all of my outer clothing is made of crinkly, lightweight, black material, that looks like a trash bag - my black stocking cap, my crinkly down jacket, and my wrinkled up, nylon wind pants. All I need is a drawstring, to be a genuine Glad trash bag imitation!

Brent

Hey, another thru-hiker!

We had a long 8-mile traverse of the Lost Park valley this morning - a high valley @10,800 feet in the Lost Creek wilderness area. The stream through this valley was populated by very hard working beavers - lots of huge dams and beaver lodges. We didn't see any of the actual residents though.

The higher elevations in this area are populated by huge happy aspen stands, which provided some shelter from the off-and-on snow squalls. It finally cleared out by the end of the day, and actually got a little warm which was nice.

We met our first fellow thru-hiker of the trip, a retired dentist named Roger. He was camped at the bottom of a beautiful valley with a good stream running through it. It looked like a really cold campsite (cold air always flows through those deep valleys from the higher elevations, as we learned the hard way on the PCT) - but Roger was definitely enjoying himself.

We talked for a while, and we moved on a couple miles to a high point with panoramic views of the Ten-mile range, and Georgia pass, which makes our future look, well, snowy.

Brent

Creampuff

This is our last day hiking with Janelle and Nathan. We made really good time getting into Bailey by 2:30 pm. Once again, the mountain bikers on the trail sent us scrambling for cover. We know that they're just as entitled to the trail as we are, it would just be nice if they'd give a little warning before leaving tire treads on your pack. Janelle tried to adopt another random trail dog today (I think that she attracts them, we didn't see any lost dogs on the PCT). We named him Creampuff, which is indicative of his disposition and what was going on between his ears. Janelle fed him a pack of peanut butter crackers (she didn't seem to want them!) and he followed us for several miles. We were getting a little concerned about what we'd do with him when we lost him at a trail head. Today was the first day Nathan's knees really started acting up, so we fed him some vitamin I(buprofen) and he was all better! I love that stuff!

Before Nathan and Janelle left from Bailey, I stole Janelle's inflatable Thermarest. I just can't handle the closed cell foam. I'm such a wimp.

Today we hiked 12 miles with Janelle and Nathan, then Brent and I did another 4.5 into Lost Creek Wilderness.

Kim

Janelle Doesn't like Peanut Butter!

This is unfortunate, given our lunch today of peanut butter and peanut butter crackers. Poor Janelle. It was a very unpleasant lunch for her. Of course, this means that she can't be a true long-distance hiker. I think that there's a box you have to check on the application, and if you don't like peanut butter, they throw you out of the club.

We spent most of the day walking through alternating burn zones and pine forest. There were abandoned quarries too. There aren't as many bikers in this part, so we spent much less time dodging them. The water's been a bit icky though. Probably because it's been raining so much. I've been throwing tantrums at the number of floaties in my water, so Brent finally started filtering it through his bandanna. It was much better after that; not nearly so chewy.

Our campsite tonight was really nice, though. It was roomy enough for both our tents, with a kitcheny-nook off to one side. There was even dry stacked firewood under a boulder! So we had a fire with dinner, Sukhi's curries (tastee!). Unfortunately, we also discovered at dinner that our fuel source had changed completely. We use yellow Heet as our fuel, and we had some we got at Walmart, and it was totally different than the normal stuff - gummy, and sticky! It burned terribly with lots of flaring, and it gunked up our stove something awful. We'll have to pick up some new stuff at the first opportunity!

Today was a 14 miler.

Kim