Part Seventy Two

     November 3rd 4th & 5th             Buena Vista, CO                       (Go to Pt 1)

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.  Before I completely crashed, I rousted around and got some water on the stove while Radio kept me company with country/western ballads and disc jockey jibber jabber.  It was another frosty night in a crowded sleeping bag but also a spectacularly clear morning the following day.

From my camp, I crossed the meadows out to where Lake Creek fed into the reservoir and started looking for a place to cross the river.  As shallow as the water was flowing I really didn’t expect this to be a problem but thin ice brought a new complication to the crossing I hadn’t considered.
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A quick test of the ice proved I was going to break through with every step and I wasn’t about to crash through the ice barefoot, nor could I afford to get my boots wet. Rocks that I would have normally used to hop across were covered with untouchable ice and I was suddenly stumped as to what to do.

Click on the map for a larger image

Several, icy logs bridged across a shallow spot in the river that I could probably manage without the pack but, obviously, the pack had to get to the other side of the river as well. How then to get my pack to the other side?
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As I continued to look for another way across I came to a smooth sheet of ice spanning the river, still too thin to hold body weight but probably thick enough to hold the weight of my pack.  That’s when I came up with an idea.

From a gravel bar I had managed to get out to, I pulled from my pack a length of alpine cord and tied one end to the pack and the other to a flat stone which I then slid across the ice to the far side riverbank.
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With the pull cord for my pack now on the other side of the river, I returned downstream and crossed over the logs I had previously spotted, with that part coming off without a hitch.  Returning upstream, I grabbed the stone tied to the cord and was rather delighted with myself watching the pack slide across the ice into my grasp.

Now on the south side of Lake Creek I again picked-up the Main Range trail which climbed its way up Willis Gulch then veered into the upper valley below Mount Hope and Quail Mountain.  The lower section of the trail only had a few inches of snow cover but further up the valley the snow got deeper.

​I stopped to put on my skis but, again, the fishscale bottoms had no bite in the cold, dry snow and this was failing of my own making.  I hadn’t wanted to bring climbing skins or even grip wax because of the added weight, relying instead on this new, ‘waxless technology’ that I had never tried before and which turned out to be utterly worthless in the unconsolidated snow conditions.

Thirty minutes of trying to slip upwards on the skis was enough to lash them back to the pack.  That left me trudging my way upwards through deep snow as I plodded up the valley toward a narrow pass that straddled the ridge between Mount Hope and Quail Mountain.

​I had originally planned my lunch stop for the top of the ridge, but by two in the afternoon I was still a long mile from making the pass and I finally had to stop and eat.  I didn’t linger, though, because it was cold and because, at the pace I was going, daylight was going to burn out before I got down into the valley on the other side.

The last mile was grueling but the view from the top of the pass offered a splendid reward for the effort.  As I crossed over to the south side and looked down the slopes, I was surprised by how little snow there was on this aspect, not near enough to ski on, and that’s when it dawned on me that the skis were probably going to be a bust.

The very nature of my north to south travel meant that I went up north facing slopes and down south facing slopes. The north facing valley I had just come up was deep with snow where the skis hadn’t worked at all.  Now looking at the sun exposed, south slope I could see there wasn’t near enough snow cover for skiing down and this was where the skis were supposed to make good time for me.

The skis were going to be a problem but standing at the top of the pass with daylight fading was not the place to hash it out.  Besides, the descent from this pass was too steep for my skiing abilities, anyways.  As it was, the gravity push going down the mountainside was hard enough to reign-in, even with boots on the ground.
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I made it to Clear Creek just before dusk and in a complete state of exhaustion. I had to clear snow away for my tent and while staking it down I noticed a lot more resistance from the frozen ground than I’d encountered thus far.  This was the first time on the trip I’d run into ground frost and it did not bode well for my stake dependent tent.

Once organized inside the tent, I dozed through cooking supper, causing the pot lid to loudly belch off the boiling pot at one point, jerking me awake to dump the whole shebang over while lurching for the stove’s valve.

The cooking was going on outside the tent door so the only tragedy was spilled water, forcing me back down to the creek for a refill, and the dumped noodles which I scooped-up out of the snow and put back in the pot.  I slept hard that night but I didn’t wake up in the morning feeling rested, at least not rested enough.
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My camp along Clear Creek was miles up the valley from where the Main Range Trail continued out along the eastern flank of Mount Harvard and Mount Columbia, so I spent the first part of the morning losing elevation down valley to where I figured the trail junction with the Main Range Trail should be, at least according to the map.

But I couldn’t find the trailhead.  I had dropped my pack and walked almost a mile further down valley then backtracked up-valley but no trailhead.  Snow was hiding it somewhere in plain sight and I couldn’t figure out where.
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Confusion like this drove me nuts.  Forty five minutes I spent looking and no trail, time had run out for finding the trail.  Now that I was at lower elevation there was less snow cover and the forest looked open enough to go cross-country so, for lack of a better plan, I finally headed up into the woods, hoping to find the trail further up the mountain.

Click on the map for a larger image

For several hours I climbed up through the forest past one false ridge after another until I came out to an opening that allowed me to get a better survey of the land.  Above and about a mile beyond was another ridgeline descending from Mount Columbia where I was pretty sure the trail ran, but it was a ridge too far. I just didn’t have the energy left in me to contemplate climbing up to that ridgeline.

Instead, I sat down with the map and tried to contrive a way to reach the trail by gaining as little elevation as possible.  Forcing my will onto the map, I decided I could traverse across the mountainside and intersect with the trail further south, as long as I didn’t lose any elevation.
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But the terrain just wouldn’t allow it, every obstacle I came up against had to be turned on the downhill side and by the time I had traversed across to Morrison Creek I’d lost a significant amount of elevation.

 At Morrison Creek I called it quits. It had been another tough and exhausting day, only to come up short of where I needed to be.  I had hoped to reach Frenchman Creek but that was still another valley away and now I would have to tack today’s lost miles onto tomorrow’s journey.

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Go to Part 73

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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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