Part Seventy Three

     November 6th 7th & 8th             Buena Vista, CO                       (Go to Pt 1)
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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.

The next morning I found the Morrison Creek trail coming up from the base of Mount Harvard which would take me back up the mountainside to reconnect with the Main Range Trail.
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I was fatigued before I even left camp and, unfortunately, I was further down the Morrison Creek drainage than I had originally thought, making for a much longer climb back up the mountain than I was anticipating.

​By the time I finally reconnected with the Main Range trail I was frustrated and tired, dropping my pack to rest.  My body was feeling over-fatigued but my mind was anxious to keep going because 7 miles distant, in the North Cottonwood Creek valley, was a summer guest ranch where friends of my parents were caretakers and expecting my arrival.

​Back up on the Main Range Trail I decided to give the skis one more go but hidden rocks kept gouging the ski bottoms and uphills of any consequence had to be herringboned or side-stepped, expending more energy than it was worth.

For the past week, the skis had been little more than 8lbs of dead weight on my back and over the ensuing miles to Cottonwood Creek I decided that when I got down to the guest ranch I would leave my skis with the Martins, the ranch caretakers, to send ahead for me.
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Straggling down the N. Cottonwood Creek trail under cold, wintery skis, I finally arrived at the A/U Guest Ranch just before dusk where the Martins and a couple of maintenance guys were literally waiting for me to show-up, and welcomed me like a minor celebrity when I finally did.

Although, I would guess winters spent at the base of Mt. Yale with no TV, no county snow plowing service, few visitors, and the same faces everyday would make even the propane guy showing up to fill the tanks a minor celebrity that time of year.

Click on the map for a larger image

They put me up in the nurses quarters where there was indoor heat, hot water, and a bunk that felt like Cloud Nine.  I threw my sleeping bag out on the bunk then took one of the most glorious, hot showers of my life.  I had been running my internal, body heater nonstop for nearly a week and it felt so damn good to be warm without having to expend any energy at all.

After I’d showered, the crew took me out for pizza in Buena Vista and they expressed considerable outdoor savvy with the many detailed questions they asked about my trip.  I certainly enjoyed the company but mostly I just wanted to fill-up on pizza and get back to that bunk.  I slept hard in the night and would probably have slept through most of the following day were it not for breakfast being served at 8:00am.

​I ate breakfast with the skeletal staff then said my thanks and goodbyes and headed back up Cottonwood Creek to rejoin the Main Range trail.  After tracking down the trail junction, I dropped my pack to eyeball the steep climb out of the valley.

I dithered, then shouldered my pack and made a half-hearted start up the steep, snowy trail but to no avail.  My climbing muscles were too fatigued for my head to generate the motivation I was going to need to push myself back up the mountainside, so I capitulated and returned to the valley.

Part of the problem was that I had already reviewed the maps and knew I could go out into the Arkansas River valley and walk around both Mount Yale and Mount Princeton, avoiding the climb out of this valley and another monster valley just like it to the south.  I would have liked to have finished out the Collegiate Range along the Main Range trail but on this particular day, I just didn’t have it in me.
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Instead, I turned around and headed back out Cottonwood Creek to where I could contour around to the south into the Arkansas River valley.  It was sunny and pleasant out in the valley while snow clouds swirled about the higher elevations, occasionally parting to allow sunlight to splash across the peaks and illuminate their structure in vibrant relief.

The terrain was a mix of sagebrush crossings to gravel roads and was mundane enough to actually be enjoyable.  At Mount Princeton Hot Springs I joined with a gravel road that ran up along Chalk Creek, managing to hike another 5 or 6 miles up valley before setting camp.

I was disappointed not to have finished hiking the Main Range Trail through the Collegiates but unlike my self-recriminations coming out of Rocky Mountain National Park, I wasn’t much bothered by missing out on Yale and Princeton’s upper flanks.  I’d had a perfectly pleasant day out in the valley and was fine with that.

​The next morning I continued on up the Chalk Creek valley another 7 miles to the abandoned mining town of Elmo.  I was back in the snow zone but, lucky for me, someone had plowed the road into Elmo so the hiking had been easy.  From Elmo, however, it was back to post-holing through the snowpack as my route turned south into the upper valley.

All afternoon I plodded through calf deep snow until I reached the upper basin where most of the snow had been swept away by harsh winds.  I continued on up to Hancock Lake and set about unpacking my gear to make camp.  I picked out what looked to be a good spot for the tent and rolled it out in the blustery wind.

As soon as I went to place the first tent stake I knew I was in trouble, the ground was frozen solid. I tried beating the stakes with a rock but that only ended up bending them.  I was tired, and cold, and in real need of getting the tent up but I was bending stakes with every try and getting nowhere.

Finally, I had to go hunting for rocks, big rocks, that I now needed to secure the tent with and which were not just lying about but had to be kicked out of the frozen turf with my boot.  And not with a whole lot of luck, I might add.  It took multiple scrounging trips and over an hour to collect enough decent sized rocks to properly anchor the tent.  I cussed and cursed my way through the whole fucking process but finally got the damn thing up and pitched taut against the wind.

After that mighty struggle was over, I piled inside the tent, pulled off my boots, fluffed out my sleeping bag, and laid down to rest.  I still had supper to fix so I didn’t want to get too comfortable but I was too tired not to just lay down for a bit.

When I finally pulled myself up to get the stove lit, I felt a little dizzy in a nauseous kind of way.  The wave of nausea passed but when it was time to eat, my appetite was off.  I couldn’t finish the pot of noodle surprise I’d made and that never happened.  There was no such thing as ‘leftovers’ on the trail.

In the middle of the night I woke-up with swollen throat glands, a cough, trouble swallowing, and realized I was getting sick, something I’d probably pick-up while I was at the ranch.  The next morning was bitter cold, probably around zero degrees, even though Radio was reporting a mild 53 degrees in Fort Worth, Texas, the only station available from Hancock Lake.
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The cold, dry air rasped at my throat, irritating my cough, and I felt lethargic as hell with every little task turning into a major chore.  This was the last day of this section and all I had to do was get over Chalk Creek Pass and out the Middle Fork valley because at the mouth of the valley was a road into Salida where I’d be done with this stretch of Colorado.

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Go to Part 74

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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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