The meager stream by my campsite was enough to allow me to collect water for a bath. It was only in the 50s, but I felt so filthy I had to clean up and even put on my clean sports bra. I felt great afterwards, though freezing during the process itself. I washed socks, too, all in half a Ziploc bag of water, settling down in my tent after a beautiful sunset and hiker midnight.
The morning was cold, as usual, around freezing. The sun within yards of me, I only had to pack up and walk to it. Walking along the edge of Cochetopa Park for miles and miles, I looked back to see San Luis Peak sticking high above the valley. I marveled that I’d been on that ridge two days ago. Again the predominant color was provided by rabbit brush and golden aspen, the backdrop changed to lodgepole pine.
Highway 114
Passing a few hunters, cars, and a couple of hikers, I stopped at Lukan Creek for water before arriving at Highway 114 around 5:30. Debbie was supposed to meet me at 6:00. The CDT crossed the highway west and downhill from the pass.
As I waited prominently beside the blacktop highway, I hydrated my dinner and cleaned out the scuzzies from my bottles with the help of a few weed branches used as scrubbies. There were no highway CDT signs at the crossing of the trail, and Debbie had never helped a hiker there before. An hour later, a little concerned not to have seen Debbie, I hailed a passing car, and the driver said he would see if she was ahead at the pass. Finding her, the friendly driver told her my location. Mission accomplished and food drop delivered—thanks to Debbie and the passing driver.
Food stowed in my pack, I headed up the road until I saw a possible tent site in a grove of aspen across the creek. Four more days to go.
The easy days of Cochetopa were past. The trail wasn't terrible, but I was tired, had a sore heel, and wondered why I’d taken up this pastime instead of driving around in an RV as everyone else my age was probably doing. Grouch and grumble.
As I headed up the road beside Lukan Creek on a frosty morning, I passed a very elaborate hunter camp with a tent the size of a small circus tent and a generator humming for heat. I didn't know whether to laugh in ridicule or be green with envy.
Although sunshine was replaced by clouds, it didn’t rain on my forest walk through mixed pines, firs, and spruce as two brothers passed me hiking south. One had a 22 for hunting small game. He seemed to think the CDT was an outdoor survival hike with guns needed.
Ridiculous. I feared for the very tame bunny six days back. The brother without the gun was carrying his brother’s food and a heavy town coat tied on top of his pack. I thought the guy ahead should leave the gun at home and carry his own food. And that town coat would be useless as raingear if it rained very hard. I was a little concerned about them. Good raingear would be worth a whole lot more for survival than a 22. Dri Ducks, though somewhat fragile, actually shed water and are really cheap, less than $20 for a rainsuit. I reminded myself I wasn’t in charge of how the rest of the world hiked.
Two Colorado Trail hikers, one from Denmark and one from Indiana, camped with me at Baldy Lake. The young man from Denmark had finished the Pacific Crest Trail and was walking the Colorado Trail as a little extra before returning to Denmark. His Danish trail name meant Walking Animal, and he’d met Billy Goat, so we had a friend in common. As I sat at their campfire enjoying conversation, I observed Walking Animal had the same Hexamid tent as mine. What discriminating good taste.
After a relatively warm and breezy night, we were all up and underway about the same time, they to head south and I north for another day of forest walking with red or yellow barberry groundcover beneath the trees.
After lunch, I caught a lovely view of peaks north, east, and west from Sargent's Mesa, but as I started down to Tank Seven Creek, it began to rain. On with the rain gear and up with the umbrella.
Arriving at Tank Seven Creek, I barely had the tent up before the next deluge began. It poured so hard raindrops hit the ground with enough force to bounce through the mosquito netting. After the storm passed, I took care of water, dinner, and camp chores, and I put a few stray logs in critical areas around my tent as splash guards. As I was finishing dinner, another storm came through, and later still, another—thunderstorms with fireworks and hard rain. My splash guards helped a little.
One thing about camping under trees, when it rains that hard, even when it is not raining, it drips all night. It didn’t just drip. It rained all night long and was raining hard when I woke in the morning. I had to pack up in the rain, my least favorite thing to do.
During the day I was tricked a few times, thinking the sun was coming out by the light reflected from golden leaves of aspen. Rain continued intermittently all morning and into the afternoon, my only view swirling clouds and raindrops. The sun came out enough to see my shadow three times, for about 15 seconds each.
Stopping at the pass early enough to give my tent some time to air out, the inside and everything in it was dry until I shoved the wet pack in a corner. I was warm in my bag, but getting up and packing was difficult the next morning at 36 degrees. However, the uphill trail soon warmed me except for my face and fingers. I had to walk three miles before the sun shone on me, and when it did, I was at a high elevation with wind that cancelled the sun’s warmth until mid-afternoon.
Monarch Pass
My back and feet hurt all day, but I made it to Monarch Pass. In the store at the pass, I asked for sign-making materials to get a hitch to Salida. Seeing what I was doing, a guy offered me a ride to town before the sign was finished. Sweet.
At the hostel in town, I met Transient and Roaring Lion, SOBO CDT hikers. It was wonderful to again be clean, have clean clothes, be among hiker trash and stuffed with pizza. (Hiker Trash is a strange but endearing term meaning other long-distance hikers.)
Our shuttle the next day took us all back to Monarch Pass, where I headed north and the others south. First off, there was a 1,700-foot climb back up to the Divide as the trail curved back on itself before dropping to parallel the highway.
On the way up, I passed the remains of low rock walls used by native people of the ancient past to herd elk to the kill. I wouldn’t have noticed them except for the description in Wolf’s book. It was mind boggling to imagine hunters with bows and arrows on that same ridge 5,000 years ago. I saw no elk, but I did see spectacular views to the north, snow on the higher peaks left from the earlier storm quickly disappearing in bright sun.
The trail became unfound (another hiker euphemism for being lost) briefly after Boss Lake Reservoir, but I made my way to the old jeep road and started ascending Chalk Creek, finding a small, level campsite. It was below 30 degrees in the night, and my choice of campsite proved poor, with thick layers of frost covering the tent in the morning. Stuffing a frost-covered tent into a small bag with bare hands was an unfavorable experience reminding me again never to camp right next to a stream.
I went up searching for sun and eventually found some. Finally reaching the pass above Chalk Creek, I was startled to find a hunter perched on the ridge watching me strain upwards. He asked if I’d seen any sheep (big horn, not domestic.)
Nope. I’d been far too busy watching my feet and panting, and I was glad he’d not mistaken me for a sheep.
Dropping down to Hancock Lake, an especially pretty high lake tucked on a shelf below the Divide, I had brunch. As I was eating, the lake was deluged with day hikers and hunters coming from the north, the first day hiker an older lady, delighted to see me solo hiking, as her friends had been giving her a hard time for doing the same.
From Hancock Lake, I walked down a very rocky jeep road, encountering day hikers, hunters, and bicycles. My feet were not happy with unstable loose rocks—the only tread to walk on. It was worse than Pennsylvania. Farther down, I was blessed with better trail in the guise of an old narrow-gauge-railroad bed, the Denver, South Park, and Pacific.
Walking easily again, I talked with day hikers heading for the narrow- gauge tunnel cut through the mountain. There they would exchange car keys with hiker friends
coming from the other side, each then continuing to a car parked at a trailhead, no one having to retrace their steps.
My trail left the railroad grade past Tunnel Lake, taking me over the Divide. Stopping in very pretty high country for a late lunch, I dried out my tent and sleeping bag, wet from the morning’s frost, and revamped my shoe inserts for feet unhappy about the earlier rocks. Walking down to the North Fork of Chalk Creek on newly constructed switchbacks, I met three bow hunters. They seemed surprised I was hiking, perhaps not knowing some people choose to walk in the woods without trying to kill game.
After I put up my tent and ate dinner, the cold settled in fast with the setting sun. Hunters all drove home for the night, and the hunter parade back up the road started at 5:00 in the morning. Camped by the jeep road, their headlights pierced the darkness shining brightly into my tent.
I saw more hunters in two days on the trail than there could possibly be game to shoot at. With all the cars and hunters around, every self-respecting deer, elk, or sheep should be far away. However, Colorado has so many little jeep roads extending into every obscure valley as the result of the search for silver in years past, maybe there was no deeper wilderness into which critters could escape.
The other side of Tin Cup Pass held beautiful Mirror Lake. It wasn’t being a mirror that day, but it was still beautiful, Aspen on the walls of Garden Basin glowed red-tinged yellow above blue water, and I had my lunch. Friendly hunters extended offers of help, amazed I’d come more than 300 miles unharmed, long-distance hiking beyond their fathoming.
On the CDT I’d become used to sharing the trail with bicycles, motorbikes, and ATVs of all kinds. Mostly, I was OK with that, although I thought the ATVs in particular greatly added to the eroded condition of the trails.
But my last day revealed dangers in sharing the trail with vehicles.
On a trail just wide enough for a three-wheeler, I heard them coming and stood on the extreme edge. The two young dudes didn't slow down even a hair when they saw me, recklessly careening over bumps as if the trail was their private racetrack, their wheels passing inches from my feet. If I’d not been standing on the very edge, I would have died.
Later, an adult, supposedly responsible for the two ahead, came by and slowed to talk to me. He had a sheepish look on his face when I thanked him for slowing when the others had not. Somehow I thought the responsible adult should have been in front, not behind, or at least had better control of or training for his younger charges.
Push to the End
Reaching the top of the ridge, I said good-bye to mountains behind and hello to those ahead. Step and Machine, a couple of SOBO thru hikers told me they’d seen cars on Cottonwood Pass Road, the dirt road on the west side of the pass. It was Sunday, and the hitching prospects would be much better on a Sunday afternoon, people headed home at the end of the weekend. Prospects would be better than on Monday as written on my hike plan.
I decided to go for the road that night instead of waiting until Monday morning, a 16-mile day and a big stretch for an old lady. After adjusting my shoe inserts, I zoomed down the trail with a sort of old-lady zoom. I didn’t stop to eat or get more water, though I did stop to take pictures of beautifully shimmering golden aspen on the climb out of Sanford Creek.
Reaching the road just as the sun went down, I was quite worried about finding a hitch in remaining daylight. Taking two steps on the road, I heard the approaching car. No thumb out for me, I grabbed my white hat from my head, waved it wildly, and the car stopped.
A young couple and their small son on the way home from Crested Butte to Boulder happily gave me a ride 21 miles to Buena Vista. Halleluiah.
We had a lovely time talking about backpacking, and they drove me to my car, which I’d parked with Carol and Charles all those many weeks. Carol and Charles took me in, even at such a late hour, putting me up in a wonderful guest room, where I had my shower and tumbled into a real bed.
Colorado’s hike added to New Mexico’s equaled 833 miles for the year on the CDT. Not a bad start for a trail I didn’t know if I could finish. I still didn’t know if I could complete it, but I decided I would continue to act as if it would happen on the chance that might turn out to be true.
Chapter 36 Fall and Winter
2012-2013
Why do older hikers keep hiking?
I can’t answer for every older hiker. But in my case, I keep hiking because I continue to enjoy being out on the trail. I learned to make allowances for the limitations that came with age. Now, if you are an older hiker, and you have no limitations, cheers to you. But I have my limitations. I slowed a little more every passing year, and I needed to be sure my medications for various ailments were with me. I needed to find more frequent food drop options than the average long distance hiker, I couldn’t do what the young and super buff could do, not even what some older hikers could accomplish. But I could do what I could do.
In spite of my limitations, I didn’t lose enjoyment of the trail. One of the people who talked to me at Many Glacier Hotel in 2017 said he thought it would be much more difficult to do a trail in sections over many years than to do a thru hike because you would have to face the pain of getting trail legs every year instead of just once.
I never looked at my hikes that way. I did work at home to try to be in shape before beginning a long trail section each year, with varying concentration and success, depending on the year and other activities in my life. But I always looked forward to being on the trail and anticipated joy. As the years passed, it simply was how I lived. I lived on the trail in the spring and in the fall. That had become normal, not unusual. Not a one-off sort of thing; it was a way of life.
Spring was rolling around again; where should I hike? I had one more year I could manage a spring hike on the CDT if I planned it correctly. RockStar was interested and available to hike part of the section I’d missed in New Mexico, and the Great Basin in Wyoming could be done in spring. Nothing else on the CDT would be snow free in the spring.
Prep Time
Liking my Zpack Hexamid tent so much, I decided to get a Cuban Fiber pack as well. My new pack had various attachments I liked, a load lifter to help adjust the load carried, a detachable lid for use slack packing, two waist-belt pack pockets and holsters on pack straps for my water bottles. Even though it was Cuban Fiber, additions to the basic pack meant a few extra ounces, but I liked having those options.
I was thrown off my training schedule when I had a basal cell carcinoma removed from my forehead, the best kind of cancer to get if you get any. But the Doc said no speed walking or strenuous activity for a week and a half after surgery. Frustrating.
However, surgery went perfectly, and so did healing. I ended up with a 6th of a facelift, and I was sorry I couldn’t plan cancer to get a full facelift. I showed up Easter Sunday with a big fat bandage on my forehead and one eye half shut. Since everyone was going to look and gasp anyway, I wrote Alleluia in glitter on tape and put it over the bandage. My Doc was a good seamstress, putting in 30 very fine tiny stitches. I was fascinated to watch her handiwork progress as she showed me with a mirror. The resulting scar is difficult to see unless I have my super short haircut for hiking.
In 2013, I drove to New Mexico, making my journey a road trip as well as a hiking trip. I stopped to see Tough Old Broad in Eugene and my cousin in Oceanside, and I drove to Lake Morena for the PCT Kickoff just for fun. I helped with registration and saw Billy Goat, JB, and others I knew from past years.
Driving on, I appreciated blooming palo verde and ocotillo below Phoenix and Tucson, waved at the exit to Sierra Vista, where I once lived, the Chiricahuas where I once hiked. I couldn’t go to New Mexico without saying hello to trail angels El Coyote, Mary, George, and Jan. When driving 12 or 13 hundred miles, what’s a little hundred-mile side trip? I had time only for brief chats and hugs, but it was worth the effort.
An Old Lady
Uncle Tom, a thru hiker at George and Jan’s, chided me for saying I was an o
ld lady. I explained I didn’t see being old as a putdown. I was 71-years old. That was simply a fact. I wasn’t 20, 30, 50, or 60. There was nothing pejorative about being old. In fact, when I spoke about being an old lady, I was bragging. I was 71-years-old, getting close to 72, and I was still hiking. How cool was that?
I didn't want to be 20 again. I was quite happy being 71. I was quite happy being old. Others thought being old was bad. Far more important was what I did, how I treated others, how I lived out the gifts God had given me at whatever age I found myself. I call myself an old lady. I say it realistically, with joy and laughter—bragging.
Hiking through New Mexico that year was drier than the year before. As I drove north to Grants, I left water caches, gallon jugs of water hidden in bushes or under trees at places I could later recognize where there was access by road, and I left a food drop at Pie Town on the way.
Chapter 37 April 18, 2013
CDT – New Mexico
Mumms
My first little bit of trail was the five miles from the trailhead north of town back to Grants, slack packing thanks to trail angel Hugo Mumm. Back in town after my walk, the Mumms and I had a nice visit as they told me of petroglyphs they’d found quite by accident while day hiking. I set out one more water cache and a food drop in a bear can. Trail gossip that year reported a water cache stolen, a horrible thing. Water was life. I carefully hid mine.
Other trail gossip made me wonder if hikers were doing due diligence before starting out on the CDT. It is a wonderful trail, but it’s not at all like the AT or the PCT. Some hikers seemed not to carry maps, know alternate routes, or understand water challenges. I hoped I’d paid proper attention to my planning so as not to endanger myself or others.
Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76 Page 33