Part Sixty Two

     October 4th - 6th                  Rabbit Ears Pass, CO                     (Go to Pt 1)

I spent nearly an hour or more of slow, deliberate movement from bush to bush before I was able to reach the fence, practically snake-bellying my way out of the pasture.  Man, was I relieved to get out of there!  Overall, the dead-end trail, northside bushwhack, and range cattle episodes had cost me the afternoon with only an hour or so of daylight left to find a camp.

I hiked down to the valley floor, crossed over County Road 14, and started up a draw on the southside of the road.  Maybe a mile or so up the draw I came across a shack up in the aspens, a fairly decent shack with walls, roof, and a wooden floor. ​

Click on map for a larger image

Maybe I was on private property but I hadn’t noticed any ‘No Trespassing’ signs or crossed over any fences to get here and the shack offered up a 5 star place to camp.  So, I fluffed out my sleeping bag on the wood planks, collected water from the creek nearby then made myself comfortable and took off my boots.

When I pulled off my socks I was not at all surprised to see quarter-sized blisters, with the skin already torn, on both feet.  I had just made the same 101 mistake I had made with my Galibier boots back in Glacier National Park; I had not pre-mole-skinned my heels bones to protect them from the yet-to-be-formed heel pockets in the boots.

I knew early in the day that I was rubbing up blisters, on both feet, but I just wouldn’t stop for the whole ordeal of addressing the problem, i.e. pulling everything out of my pack to get at the first aid kit in the bottom, taking off and putting back on boots and socks, cutting moleskin to work, re-packing all my crap – a stop like that could have cost me almost two miles in time spent.

Instead, I now had two, raw wounds that were somehow going to have to heal while I continued to do exactly the same thing that had caused the injuries in the first place, namely hiking in these boots.  And I already knew that this was going to get worse before it ever had a chance to get better.  I put a salve on the exposed flesh then covered the blisters with gauze, putting on a clean pair of liner socks after the bandaging was done. ​

The entire day had been an ordeal and what did I have to show for it?  Butchered feet.  What in the world was I doing out here, anyway.  Why would anyone voluntarily put themselves through a day like this and still decide it was a good idea to get-up and do it all over again tomorrow?  Seriously, what was the purpose of all of this arduous, pack-animal labor coupled with every discomfort known to modern man?  I could not see a single thread of value in what I was doing right now and I was decidedly not having any fun.
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Fortunately, I got a good night of solid sleep without any crazy dreams and the shelter of the cabin added a layer of security.  The next morning I spent the better part of half an hour applying ointment, fresh gauze and moleskin to my blistered heels then forced my feet back into the boots for break-in day three.  I hobbled around camp until the pain was tolerable enough to walk then packed my gear and set-off up the final stretch of the draw.

I crossed over the Divide at Diamond Peak, descended to Diamond Creek, then crossed the Divide again at Arapaho Pass as the ridge looped back around on itself, all on fairly moderate terrain with Forest Service roads to follow.  I made it to Indian Creek by early afternoon and stopped for lunch. ​

I pulled off my boots to give my feet a break and noticed blood oozing through the heel of my left sock.  I was wearing a thick, hiking sock over a thin, liner sock so I pulled off the outer sock and saw a watery bloodstain across the heel of the white, liner sock.  I could tell the gauze and moleskin were still mostly in place and that the liner sock was now just another bandage over the wound, so I didn’t pull it off.

This was the price that I had hoped I wouldn’t have to pay for breaking-in a hard-core pair of leather, mountain boots in three days or less.  But on the flipside, notwithstanding the blisters, I was winning by-God!  The boots were giving in - across the toe, over the instep, and in the heel pockets, I almost had those bastards broke.  

Nonetheless, putting on the boots after lunch was met with an immediate pain burst followed by the initial stingers as I started to hike, but as the pained dulled out I could feel that the heel pockets were losing their teeth and I no longer felt a direct assault on the blistered area, which was true for both boots.  And you know what?  I was pretty darn happy about that.

My afternoon consisted of a prolonged march up the Indian Creek valley to reach the creek’s headwaters just below the Continental Divide, which is where I stopped.  It had been another long and difficult day and at the end I was exhausted and floundering in a state of mental wavering.  

My parent’s suggestion to stop and take a ‘break’ had been banging around in my head all afternoon and going home for a week or two, as my parents had encouraged me to do, was definitely wheedling around in my brain as I looked for yet another place to spend the night on the ground. 
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Before setting-up my camp, before anything else, I pulled off my boots, socks and the oozing moleskin bandages from my heels and just sat for a while, looking at the mess I had made out of my feet.  Of all the things to be careless about, the wellbeing of my feet should not have been one of them; I never should have let those blisters get away from me like that.  Man, I was so freaking tired of aching, hurting feet.

At camp that night I was in a miserable state of mind.  I was decidedly wrung-out and exhausted by getting-up every day to a physical fight that inevitably had me beat down by day’s end, but I was also starting to feel the effects of a persistent, low-grade fear of being out here all alone, and that was casting a pall over my motivation to be out here at all.

From the day Craig and I had stepped out of Brian’s Jeep in Canada, there had always been a sense of insecurity and vulnerability, and for good reason, humans are just plain vulnerable to an entire kaleidoscope of calamities in the mountains.  But between the two of us, it was easier to keep those calamities at bay and our spirits buoyed above the fear of them.  

Lately, however, situations and terrain that had previously looked fairly benign to me were now more clearly revealed as risks to me, and I was certainly more anxious about my safety than I had been while traveling through the mountains with Craig.  
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At this point, though, I had no gauge for my ability to cover the courage void left in Craig’s absence, it was still a void, and I was having a difficult time dealing with that because I had expected from myself, or least hoped for, some kind of extra, inner strength that would have already filled that void.  But so far, not much in the way of surplus confidence had risen to the surface.

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Go to Part 63

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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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