Part Fifty

     September 6th & 7th              Wind Rivers, WY                           (Go to Pt 1)

Now that we were in the narrow Pixley Creek Valley, there was practically no wind at all, although I could still hear it roaring overhead, and the clouds had opened-up to let the sun through; in other words, less than one mile from Iceberg Lake it was turning into a beautiful day.  ​

Although logic had dictated, I hated the decision we’d just made, and now as I waited, I watched Craig make his way down through the boulders on shaky legs.  This was all too much, I stopped watching Craig and looking up at the blue sky, and instead stared down at the gravel at my feet.  

My head was full of dismay, I was thinking, ‘Shit, if we can’t stay on the Continental Divide then what’s the point, anybody can walk to Mexico in the lowlands.’  And then it was ‘Christ, if Craig can’t keep-up then he’s just going to have to drop out.’  A mix of anger stirred by despair.

I waited for a short bit down at the creek then, as Craig got close, I got-up and started-off again. There was no trail leading down Pixley Creek and the upper half of the valley was clogged with boulders; for Craig, these boulder descents were becoming a worst case scenario.

It took quite a while to navigate our way down through the upper Pixley Creek valley to the steeply forested pitch below and my impatience with waiting for Craig to get down through the boulders was starting to grind over any empathy I had for his plight. Then, as we got closer to the valley floor, the descent turned steeper and cluttered-up with deadfall, causing more trouble that took up still more time. 

I didn’t violate our wilderness code to always stay within a holler or a visual of each other and I stayed within a visual of Craig as we descended but I didn’t wait for him to catch-up to me either, not until we reached the bottom of the valley and stepped out onto the Highline Trail, running along the Green River.

Back in St. Louis we had foolishly dissed the Highline Trail as the ‘tourist’ route.  Of course, this trail should have been our way through the Wind Rivers all along but, godamit, we were mountaineers, or at least we thought we were until we had to concede to this trail.  

Truth be told, the mountains were too complex for us to do what we were trying to do, which was to combine mountaineering with backpacking; we could either set-up a camp and go climbing or we could pack-up our gear and keep moving but trying to combine the two turned out to be fantastically difficult and logistically over our heads.  Still, very little about stepping onto this trail felt right; It felt to me like cheating.  

Then there was Craig.  1,400 miles together and now he was struggling to keep up.  If the problem was with his knees, which is what it looked like to me, then his trip was over, maybe not today but somewhere down the line it would become untenable. 

Craig finally joined me at the trail and, with little conversation beyond map pointing, we turned and started up toward the head of the valley. We made camp at Three Forks Park and the mood was dark, somber and quiet.  I was still sulking over our abandonment of the ridgeline traverse, but as we set about putting our camp together, it was Craig I was fretting about. 

There was an elephant in camp that neither one of us wanted to talk about.  While I had the urge to get this ‘knee thing’ and ‘lagging’ problem out in the open, given the growing magnitude of the situation, it was precisely the magnitude of the situation that made it so difficult for either one of us to get it out.

If I brought it up, it would be to basically tell Craig, in so many words, that his trip was over - and I wasn’t about to do that.  First off, I wasn’t completely certain the trip really was over for him. I mean, he wasn’t complaining about his knees or anything, but then again, he wouldn’t.  I don’t know that Craig complained about anything, ever.  I knew what I’d seen the past number of days, though, and ‘game over’ looked inevitable to me.  

But again, this was all still speculation, and I hadn’t even thought about what I would do if Craig did have to leave the trip.  So, whatever was going to happen at this point was going to have to come from Craig because I really didn’t have a clear thought about what to say.

For Craig, the anguish must have been even more acute. He and I had invested everything into this trip and beyond the Continental Divide, in our young lives, there was nothing else.  Dropping out, because of injury or otherwise, would mean ‘quitting’ with the added burden of abandoning me alone in the wilderness, and that was something Craig was not prepared to do. 

As long as he could still manage his load and get to the next camp then that’s what he intended to do.  Besides, he honestly figured he was getting along well enough; up-hills and rolling terrain seemed okay and now that we were back on a trail, things were bound to improve.  By morning, the elephant had grown a bit larger.

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September 7

The Green River Valley next morning was sunny and windless, with crisp, autumn temperatures, a deep-blue sky and colorful, underbrush foliage.  The morning started like any other, except a schism, a shift, a change between Craig and I had occurred that made this morning different.  There was a cloud of despondency hanging over us both and I felt no enthusiasm toward the day.

As we turned up the trail, a long, sustained climb of over 2,000ft waited for us; we had to climb out of the valley, this time up to along the toe of the peaks, and reclaim half of the elevation we’d surrendered yesterday.  And the grind out of the valley, up to Green River Pass, was just plain, hard backpacking, taking us all morning and into the early afternoon to get there.  

​The trail had brought us back up into the alpine tundra, above 10,000ft, and at the top of the pass we stopped for a late lunch.  By now cold, grey clouds had rolled in, blocking the sun and, of course, it was windy above tree-line, not to mention cold.  ​

Click on map for a larger image

As we were plodding up the trail, I’d kept rolling over scenarios in my head on how Craig could continue with the trip but the only conclusion I could come to was that he was probably going to have to drop-out. There weren’t enough rest days on the calendar for him to revive rickety knees.  

Then I’d mull over what was I going to do if Craig did have to drop out – go on alone? Through Colorado, late in the season?  By myself?  Or just call a halt to the whole thing and, if nothing else, at least take a break?

Then the dark clouds swirling around me would switch over to the ridgeline traverse failure, letting that disappointment further pound away in my head, inevitably leading to anger at all of this fucking climbing equipment we continued to haul around, completely worthless to us now. 

Meanwhile, Craig, although a bit slower than normal, had made the climb up out of the valley with little trouble and was showing no signs of distress.  But then, uphill wasn’t the problem, it was the going back down.  But hell, I didn’t know, maybe now that we were back on a trail his knees wouldn’t get jolted so bad.
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Just beyond, on the other side of the pass, was Summit Lake, an alpine jewel set into the tundra and a perfect place to camp, so when we got there we dumped our packs and called it quits.  It was cold and windy as we cooked-up supper but the sun broke through the clouds just before dropping off into the horizon, creating a dramatic sunset across the lake for the brief moments it lasted.

September 8

The night was dark and cold and somewhere in the pre-dawn hours it began to snow.  When I awoke in the morning and heard nothing but silence I thought ‘Great, no wind!’  Then I looked out the tent door and saw four inches of snow on the ground and large flakes falling from the sky.  I glanced over to where the trail had been but in the rocky tundra, four inches was all it took to completely erase its existence.

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Go to Part 51

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The CDTC was founded in 2012 by volunteers and recreationists hoping to provide a unified voice for the CDT. Working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the CDTC is a non-profit partner supporting stewardship of the CDT. The mission of the CDTC is to complete, promote and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, a world-class national resource. For more information, please visit continentaldividetrail.org.

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