Part Seventy One

     October 27th - November 3rd            Leadville, CO                (Go to Pt 1)

I shuffled into Leadville just before dark, got a motel room and called home straight away, knowing my parents would be anxious to hear from me.  My Mom picked-up and as it turned out, my Dad was somewhere in Kansas driving my skis out to Colorado. Having forgotten to mail them, he’d taken off from work and was now on his way out to Leadville to deliver the skis.

This was so typical Hal, to just jump in the car and drive out to Colorado with my skis like he was dropping off my gym shoes at school.  I thought this news both funny and welcome since seeing my Dad would be another good, morale booster.  Hal pulled into Leadville around noon the following day.

Click on the map for a larger image

Hal stayed over in Leadville two nights and we went bowling, ate at the café, played pool, and before he left we drove up toward Mosquito Pass.  We took the car as far up as the rocky road allowed then hiked a ways further to where my Dad could look out over at the Sawatch and Collegiate Ranges.

This was the first time that I’d ever seen him be truly impressed with something I was doing.  He looked out at all of those indomitable mountains and simply could not see himself out there doing what I was trying to do, and I knew exactly how he felt.
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Hal left around noon the following day and, again, it was really hard to watch someone go, leaving me alone and lonely. I spent the rest of the afternoon with a roll of wax thread from my repair kit, sewing frayed seams and reinforcing strap attachment points on my pack; and there was still food and gear to be packaged for the next section.   ​

The next morning I walked out of Leadville under ominous skies.  Snow clouds hung low over the mountains, obscuring any view of the peaks, and temperatures were cold, somewhere in the mid-teens.  I followed a road out of town that took me west to Turquoise Lake then along the lake’s south shore.  Near the lake’s inlet I found the Main Range Trail that would lead me south along the eastern flank of Mt. Elbert.

A few inches of snow covered the ground and intermittent flurries blew from the sky.  I now had my skis and was anxious to use them but there still wasn’t enough snow cover yet to ski. Instead, I hiked up out of the valley to where the trail reached the more moderate terrain above, then continued along the snow dusted path as far as Rock Creek before making camp.

Creeks and other water sources that had not dried-up over the summer months were beginning to freeze and I was not carrying enough fuel for the stove to start melting snow for water, so I made sure to keep my bottles topped off whenever water was available.

I was delighted with my new, one-man tent which had been working out great in the colder temperatures because the smaller size retained body heat better.  Even lighting a candle would warm the tent enough to notice, and having the stove lit inside the tent was like turning on a furnace.

After getting the tent pitched, I piled inside and got my shit organized to cook a meal then turned on my new companion, a pocket sized, AM/FM radio that Hal had brought out to me, hoping it would keep me in touch with the weather forecasts.  Wow, what a delight!  I suddenly had a new, best friend named Radio who could yakity-yak and sing songs for as long as I could stand it!

Because of the bitter, overnight temperatures, my sleeping bag was getting pretty crowded these days with my boots hogging the foot of the bag, two quarts of water pinching the sides, and the rest filled with a plethora of miscellaneous clothes and stuff that I didn’t want to have to eat, drink, or put-on frozen in the morning.
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And the next morning remained cold with those same, grey clouds from yesterday spitting snow flurries in my face as I packed-up camp.  From Rock Creek, I continued to work my way across the mountain’s flank, still carrying the 8lb skis on my back.  Intermittent snow had fallen on and off throughout the day but as I set my next camp near Halfmoon Creek that afternoon, snow began to fall uninterrupted.

A light snow fell steadily until around midnight when the skies finally cleared-off and the temperature plummeted. In the morning, Radio, who had also spent the night in my bag, was reporting zero degrees in Leadville and outside the tent it was crystal-clear cold with about 6 inches of fluff glittering across the forest floor.

From Halfmoon Creek, the Main Range Trail climbed steeply up, out of the valley before again attaining moderate ground that ran along the lower quad of Mount Elbert.  The climb out of the valley had been too steep and the snow too dry for the newfangled ‘fishscales’ on my ski bottoms to grip, and hiking through the snow was no fun either.

Once I got to the more moderate terrain further up the mountain I was able to take advantage of the skis and their glide, even on gentle uphills.  The skis were faster than hiking by a little bit but by early afternoon, my unpracticed, ski muscles were a quiver.  Fortunately, the sun had been warm enough to melt down much of the snow, so I was happy to take off the skis later in the day and resume hiking.
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At around four in the afternoon, I stood at a point on the trail just a couple of miles from the Twin Lakes Reservoir, where I wanted to camp.  Impatient to get down to camp, I made the miraculously impulsive decision to try and short-cut the trail by taking a beeline through the forest down to the lake.

The first problem with this rash decision was that the reservoir wasn’t nearly as close as it had appeared, and another unforeseen issue was a steep, narrow gulley between me and the valley floor that totally sucked me in and from the bottom of which I had to fight to extricate myself.

My hoped for, 30 minute short-cut had turned into an hour of snowed-over bushwhacking that didn’t let-up until I finally came out into the Twin Lakes meadows.

I was exhausted well before I got into my tent and once inside it wasn’t easy to muster the motivation necessary to cook a meal, but I was too hungry not to eat every spec of food allotted to the day, so I reluctantly rousted around and got some water on the stove while Radio kept me company with Waylon Jennings and Roy Clark.  It was another frosty night in a crowded sleeping bag but also a spectacularly clear morning the following day.

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Go to Part 72

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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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