Back at it
Laurie gave me a ride back up to the trail today. It was nice to see a friendly face at the start of the trail. Which for a moment there, I wasn’t sure, in fact I was at one point certain, that I was going back into Creede due to snow.
The morning started off at ihop and fairly smoothly. I didn’t get as early of a start as I had intended... but it’s alright. I didn’t want to rush around. It’s only another 2000 miles!
I walked passed the Walmart (I felt like folks from Creede would easily go directly to the Walmart and back and skip town all together) and found a piece of cardboard to write “cdt hiker to Creede”.
Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t out there waiting longer then 10 mins and a fella stopped to pick me up.
Joe was on his was from Indiana to a cabin of his in Durango. I think he had been driving for over 20 hours straight and wanted a little break in his car ride. So he brought me to south fork, the split off to Creede from the road to Durango.
I then plopped up at the end of the road towards Creede, and wasn’t there longer then 10 mins again! A gal named Helen was on her way to a ribbon cutting just outside of Creede, and I was her third CDT hiker she’s given a ride to recently! It was actually quit swift work.
I textedLaurie to let her know I had made it into town. She ironically was off to south fork for some errands, and was going to be back around 1.
In the meantime, I walked into town and saw the pavilion stuffed with hikers. At least 8. They apparently had gone up the route I was about to go, and faced too much snow at one point and decided to turn around and go back to hitch over to Del Norte to take one of the alternate routes.
Great. My little break wasn’t enough it would seem. So I decided to do the best thing I could waiting for Laurie to get back, go to the bar. Had lunch and a couple whiskeys. By the time Laurie got back I was done with my meal and got in her car. Ultimately, didn’t want to spend another day navigating to get to the trail, so decided to give it and shot and see how it would go. It’s about 20 miles shorter than the alternate route, also.
So I was off hiking up. For the first 3 miles or so it was it was steady incline. Nothing too crazy, but going almost to 13,000 feet. Being at sea level for the last few days definitely didn’t help my acclimation to the altitude! There was significantly less snow even before my route met back up with the “red route” (the official cdt, and high route). From there I was post holing in some pretty gross slushy snow. It definitely didn’t help it was after 3pm. And there were tons of waist high drops in the snow. Yay! Fortunately, there were still quite a few dray patches developing, and I was able to navigate at least around some of the snow, so all in all it wasn’t too awful yet.
As I approach the high point, I see two hikers off in the distance going south bound towards me. Great. More thru hikers turning around because just over that saddle is jammed with snow?
At a large unavoidable snow crossing with the entrance of at least four knee to waist high post holes, I decided to stop and wait for them to arrive. Also traffic jams on foot prints is never fun.
As they got closer, I realized they had day packs and were thru hikers but just went up to the peak which is a 14er for the day. I had inquired what the trail looked like on the other side as lots turned back around this area, and he was shocked saying no, just over that it’s dry down the valley.
Woohoo! I quickly threw on my goiters and plowed my way through. As I crossed over, he was right. The valley was lush and green with a river running down it, which id follow for some time.
A few little patches of snow to cross that fortunately weren’t too deep, then boom, gradual descent, dry (with an occasional over flow running down it), and smooth trail. It felt glorious. I was pretty tired postholing and navigating that snow, all while at high elevation going uphill. But by the time I got here, my second wind kicked in and I just flew down that beautiful trail.
At one point around 7 I was going to stop. Then decided to go another 30 mins. Then I realized just three miles ahead was a trailhead with a privy. Always nice to camp near one of those.
The sun sets at 8:30 now, and my eta was about 8:15, so I said why not. 18 miles on the day, with a decent amount of snow and starting after 1pm going close to 13,000 feet. Not bad for two weeks off. But my feet did start to hurt at one point, and I’m probably more tired than I should be.
I got to the trailhead and a few more folks from Denver had just got there as well. They were setting up and I did the same and made dinner and off to bed I go. Not a bad first day on the trail. I have a little over 3 days of food, which means 24 miles/day. Hoping there’s not much snow ahead, but can’t imagine I’d get lucky enough for 72 miles of dry trail. I’ll take what I can get.
