Part Fifty Three

​     September 13-16                         Lander, WY                                (Go to Pt 1)
The following day we made the long, dusty march out of the mountains down to Hwy 187, arriving late in the day, beat-down tired.  I don’t recall much about the hitch-hike to Lander, only that we got in after dark.

Our ride dropped us at the outskirts of town where we were left to walk about a half-mile to a ramshackle motel shoved off to the side of the road.  A liquor store with a loudly buzzing, neon light sat across the street from the motel.  We got a room and dumped our packs.

We didn’t shower before walking to a café for cheeseburgers and coffee because food was always the priority whenever it was readily available. After taking the edge off our hunger, we returned to the motel.

​We sat in the room for a while, staring at that neon arrow, flashing ‘LIQUOR’ 

Click on the map for a larger image

across the street, then decided to walk over and see if they had any nuts or chips or something else to eat, which they didn’t, so instead we returned with a bottle of Jack Danial’s.

​Back in the room we cracked the whiskey and took a pull.  “Ooo, shit-dang!” It was terrible, like drinking turpentine. “Why’d we used to drink this shit?” I sputtered.  But after about fifteen minutes and another pull I started to remember why as I melded back into the cracked, vinyl chair, feeling more relaxed than I’d been in weeks.

Craig and I started to laugh at the crappy motel room and the dented-up pick-up trucks pulling through the liquor store’s drive-through window across the street.  The whole scene became rather comical, from the peeling wallpaper and dime-store, cowboy pictures on the wall to the threadbare bedding and our ‘scenic overlook’ view of beat-up pick-up trucks and neon lights across the road.

Then we began reminiscing about the trip, anecdotes of our various misadventures along the way, all of them funnier than shit because they hadn’t killed us. We talked about our luck at having descend out of the high peaks in the Wind Rivers just before the snowstorm hit, and speculated about the trouble we would have been in had that storm caught us up high on the Continental Divide.
 
Without landing on any of the real trials and tribulations we experienced in the Wind Rivers, the conversation turned toward the Great Divide Basin and the Red Desert, the next stretch out in front.  I was hesitant about this look forward and held back from commenting very much as Craig, with a little help from Jack, talked enthusiastically about dispensing with the Red Desert and moving on to Colorado. 

As we began to banter back and forth the logistics of crossing the desert, there were two things running through my tired, rubbery brain; first, based on what was probably whisky optimism, Craig was sounding intent on heading into the Divide Basin (I guess because he hadn’t been forced to his knees screaming “uncle” yet) and second, this was not exactly what I’d expected, because part of me had really thought that Craig was going to call this the end-of-the-trail, but that’s not at all what was happening.  

Craig ended up asking is if I’d be OK with one extra day in Lander to give his knees a “rest”.  I almost had to laugh at this “one extra day” request because, as I saw it, anything short of a month wasn’t going to revive or rehabilitate a thing, especially not his knees, but I did have to admit, extra rest sounded like a swell idea. “Sure, let’s take an extra rest day.” And with that, we capped the Jack.

The next morning was pretty rugged, the drunk from the night before had kind-of wrecked my sleep and we were both hung-over, cotton-mouthed and blurry around the edges until we could find some orange juice and something to eat.  The daylight glare was harsh and the short walk to the café seemed to take longer than I’d remembered from the night before.

We ate breakfast and drank a pitcher of orange, which helped to steady the ship, but after the plates were cleared away lethargy set-in, hard.  From the café, it wasn’t far to the Post Office where our desert gear was waiting to be picked-up but we paid our bill and returned to the motel instead, napping on and off the rest of the day in a fog of fatigue.

The following day did not shake the lassitude that still had us moving in absent-minded, slow motion.  After a sluggish start to the morning, we set about collecting our desert gear from the Post Office, sending the Wind River equipment back to St. Louis, then running a load at the laundromat while picking-up supplies at the grocery store.

Back at the motel room we dumped everything out on the floor for sorting and packing then sat down at the little table by the window and polished off the rest of the whiskey. As the glow returned, we dug through our supply package for the map-set covering the Divide Basin which we spread out on the bed to examine.
 
We had 7.5, largescale quadrants from Lander down to South Pass but only a couple of 250,000 series maps of minuscule scale to cover the entire expanse of the Great Divide Basin (Red Desert) down to Interstate 80.  Sketching out our route from Lander into the Divide Basin and then out across the desert wasn’t very hard; some foothill wandering down to South Pass then dirt roads hugging the western edge of the basin into a whole lot of brown nothingness.

Finding water on the 250,000 series map would have been a real head-scratcher had it not been for some key information we’d gotten from the northbound, Continental Divide hikers six weeks earlier. Undeniably, this was the bleakest stretch of the entire Continental Divide with the only upside to this barren country being that maybe Craig would be able to walk the flat, featureless terrain, as he anticipated.  After we’d seen enough desolation on the maps, we wandered back to the café and tried to forget about the desert for a while.

The next day was our add-on, rest day and by early afternoon it had already turned into shear boredom with our packs sitting by the door, ready to go.  I was starting to get a little agitated about hanging out here just to give Craig’s knees a ‘rest’ - like that was going to fix anything - when we, or at least I, should have been out on the Divide, clocking miles.  

At the same time, the reality of continuing this journey without Craig was also taking hold, sending a deep current of fear and doubt through me; I did not want to walk out into that desert alone, I really didn’t, and, at that moment, I was glad Craig was going into the desert with me.

But what I really wanted heading into the Divide Basin was ‘Montana’ Craig back in the game, the guy who was always ready and steady, no matter what came along.  But that guy had vanished.  ‘Clipped by an arrow’ on Lava Mountain… and he wasn’t coming back.

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Go to Part 54

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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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