Mile 815ish- Spring Creek Pass/Lake City, CO

Softwalker looking over the next section of maps

Well, friends, I've made it through another hundred miles.  These past miles were hard fought for, and while not completely worn out, I am definitely glad to be in a place that it's not snowing or windy right now.


Trail!

The last stretch of trail we went through has been the longest food carry between resupplies I've done yet on this trip- I carried 7 days worth of food out of Pagosa Springs- that's a lot of snacks!  Thankfully I've been traveling with a good group of people.  We've been having fires nearly every night to dry out our shoes so they won't be frozen in the morning.  We've also been each other's support systems/navigators/trail breakers all in one!  I would not have been nearly as motivated to get up and moving if I didn't have Speed Bump moving around in a tent near me on many a frosty morning this past week.  And with Bumpy or Max Chill or Waldo leading the way, it made trail finding a bit easier though the post-holing got worse later in the day with old foot prints. 




Pod and Gnar post-holing their way towards me

Where do we go? Gnar, Pod, and Max Chill.

Ridge walk! Yea, along that cornice.

There was an avalanche here sometime ago.

'The Window' Apparently, you can cross country
 to go through it if you want...

The CDT meets the CT near Silverton. 
It looks alot different than the last time I was here.

SpeedBump crossing another snowy patch

Woke up to this about 17 miles outside of the pass into Lake City.

Mile 710ish- Pagosa Springs, COLORADO

I can only assume this means the CDT is
inherently hazardous to public use.

Estero making it across our "log bridge"

Softwalker and I hung out in this conveniently
placed shelter during a rain/hail/thunder storm.

Woo-e, it's been a crazy week.  As you can see from this post's title, I have officially made it to Colorado, a new state along the divide.  That also means I've left the desert behind for higher ground-literally.  The group I've been hiking with and I left Ghost Ranch to begin our semi-immediate ascent into the higher mountain range known as the San Juan mountains.  As we got higher, the weather became cooler, the water became more plentiful, oh, and we began the snowy/icy traverses with the wind battering us on a daily basis. The snow also makes the trail a bit harder to find, thank goodness for maps!  The past few days, since Cumbres Pass, we've been walking mostly above 11,000ft, so it's been stunning and tough on the body.  As of right now, I could go on and on, but I believe photos would do this beautiful scenery more justice than my attempts at describing them so here they are:

More water = more mud.

Home for the night.

Me, Estero, and Softwalker at a trail marker.
  The snow begins

We thought we were on trail getting into Colorado.
 Apparently, we were wrong.

Softwalker near Cumbres Pass.

North of Cumbres Pass, with weather coming in.

And it snowed on us a few times.

Which meant fresh tracks in the morning.

Self Portrait at about 11,900ft and 8:30am

Speed Bump crossing a slope- the new snow in the sun helped us not fall.

Also, I have been collecting species information through a group called ASC (Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation)  It's been really cool to try and sneak up on different species to get a photo to report back to the website I've been recording it on- inaturalist.org.  I believe it's also made me more aware of my surroundings- as a thru-hiker, we sometimes get tunnel vision.  On this trip alone, I've spotted herds of elk, snakes, birds aplenty, and ptarmigan, to name a few.

Mile 550ish- Ghost Ranch

Trail angels/Estero's friends Sarah and Calculator

The top of Mt. Taylor!

Looking forward

Well it's been a week of ups and downs here on the trail (temperature and elevation, anyway).  After being dropped back off in Grants from Albequerque, we went up to the top of Mt Taylor.  At over 11,000ft, it gave me an idea of what I'd be enjoying more of in the days to come- being out of breath and slow going up.  Then there was the downhill- in the trees snowy, and in the sun I could basically run down the trail.
The walking to Cuba, NM was lovely, with going up and across and down mesas.  There was a 28-mile waterless stretch, which was a bit arduous, thankfully it was cloudy that day.  We made it into Cuba from Grants (110 miles) in 4 and change days, and headed out again the same day after resupplying.

Lit-up trail.  All those plants are Cholla Cactus, BTW.

Blooming Cactus

After Cuba, we headed up again, only to be snowed on- what!?  Yes, snowed on, while walking through marshy meadows and over patches of snow.  That experience has me thoughtful for what's ahead in the San Juan mountains of southern Colorado.
As we were walking into Ghost Ranch, I was thinking about how happy I currently am and how wonderful life is and how grateful I am for what my mind and body can do and go through, it's such a great place to be in.  I'm so joyful I could burst!

Softwalker and Estero doing sock laundry in the first
flowing stream we've encountered

Walking toward Rio Chama

Mile 395ish- Grants, NM

Quite some time has passed since I last wrote.  The reasoning for this is because there hasn't been an opportunity between Silver City and Grants to update this blog.  Read: no computers for almost 250 miles-what freedom!  Though since this entry will be a long one, I'll split it into different subtitles.

Jammin' in Silver City

Silver City through the Gila to Snow Lake
My compatriots and I stayed in Silver City with some lovely people the evening after my last blog entry and attempted to leave mid-morning.  Due to the amount of people in town wanting to talk with us/our eating a delicious breakfast , we ended up leaving later in the morning and wandering back into the Gila (pronounced hee-la) National Forest.  As we gained some elevation walking the road out of Silver City, we were taken back into the land of pine trees and shade.  The wind has been a constant on this trip, so I'm very thankful when the trees become a barrier. Walking with others along the road has also been nice; we can attempt to entertain one another.

Softwalker and the sunset- notice his lack
of shoes.  He didn't do it all the time, but it was
refreshing to see bare foot prints ahead of me

Softwalker on one of the first of the Gila crossings

Frozen shoes!

Our 2nd day from Silver City, we switch-backed down a trail to the confluence of where we began to follow the Gila River up to Doc Campbell's Post- a store that holds packages for thru-hikers.   The first river crossings were novel, and then it just became wet shoes all day.  Waking up to frozen shoes the next morning, the river crossings became more irritating because the cold water caused a pins-and-needles sensation from my thighs down to where I lost sensation (around ankle-height)  Thanks to the scenery for making it worth getting out of my sleeping bag before 10am.  Also, the lure of hot springs definitely helped!  We took a day off at the hot springs campground to go see the Cliff Dwellings,and ended up getting a ride from a park ranger who worked at Mesa Verde N.P. who had come down to see how these cliff dwellings compared to the ones he worked at.

The guys in Gila Hot Springs

Gila Cliff Dwellings

After Doc Campbell's, heading back into the canyon

Estero at another river crossing

Onto more river crossings!  Also, a middle of the canyon hot springs!  Along the Gila River, one of our maps stated, "There are 85 crossing between here and Snow Lake"  So, I began counting.  I reached 83 before we hit Snow Lake. There were river crossings galore, and between the crossings in the canyon, there were thigh-high reed-like plants that would hit your wet legs and give them micro abrasions.  My legs burned so badly a couple of nights that I had trouble sleeping.

Jordan hot springs! 92 degree water.

Trail magic beers- 8:30am.  Thanks, random hunters!

Snow Lake to Pie Town

Snow Lake's water level is a bit low

We looked at our maps at Snow Lake, and it was the last water source for quite a distance, so we filled up. It also happened to be super muddy and gross, though we're pretty used to that at this point.  Eating dinner next to the bathrooms (they were a nice windbreak) at the campground, and then heading on to the waterless stretch of dirt road walking was vastly different than what we had been walking through for the past 4 days or so.

Gate on some actual trail before Pie Town

We found snow on Mangas Moutain!

View from the fire tower.

This is what the Gila River does to your legs.

After spending a chilly night atop a ridge in a pasture, we followed a forest service road for most of the day, cutting across to another forest service road right before lunch.  Unfortunately at this cut-off, we chose the wrong forest service road to follow and ended up going down a different canyon, having to backtrack, and finishing the day at 27 miles, only 20 of those being on-trail.  Also, that extra mileage wreaked havoc on my feet, causing 5 or 6 new blisters to rear their angry heads.  This was not only caused by the mileage, but also caused by my shoes being a bit too small in the toe area- I have wide feet.
Hobbling on waterless, exposed dirt roads for the next few days was troublesome with my feet acting up, though we did get to go into a working fire tower on Mangas Mountain as well as talk to a few of the many hunters we saw out looking for turkeys.  Coming into Pie Town was a great day, I felt as though we were immediately blended into the community.  A wonderful woman name Nita has opened up the house she raised her family in(nicknamed 'the toaster house' because of the unique outdoor decorations) to hikers/bikers/travelers of all kinds, and loves hearing their stories and inviting them to check out some of the local sites.  We ate our fill of pie at the Pie-O-Neer restaurant, and had a couple nights of singing out on the porch of the toaster house to revive our spirits before moving on to Grants.

PIE! In Pie Town.

So many hikers in one place, they had
to get a photo...or 12.

Pie Town to Grants

Looking for life outside Pie Town

Drop off 2 dozen fresh eggs at the toaster
house and hikers will eat them.

The only sign on the road walk out of Pie Town that didn't
read some version of "No Trespassing"

We headed out of Pie Town and were greeted with a road walk along with light-to-medium gusting winds.  This is becoming the norm for the CDT, and it makes me glad I chose to go north-bound so that I'll appreciate the actual trails even more when I am on them more often.  Not only are road walks harder on the feet, I feel they're also tough on the psyche- am I on a trail here?  It's a not-too-subtle reminder of how young and incomplete the trail truly is. We did get to see some native ruins, go past a beautiful arch along Hwy 117 into Grants, and see ALOT of lava rock.

Ruins up a canyon near the trail

My feet are also hurting, to the point of generally having to focus on my breathing to abet the pain for the few hours of walking between breaks.  Over the past few days- a couple before Pie Town and a couple after- I've had to be selective about which blister was causing the most pain so I could pop it that day.  The rest in Pie Town helped, but did not solve my problem.  Which is why I asked my resupplier extraordinaire, Fidget, to send me new shoes in Grants.  I currently also have an ankle-sized lump an inch or so above my right ankle that I've started referring to as my third ankle- it doesn't hurt and I have no idea how it got there- any thoughts?

A blister under a blister? Yea, that.

Looking ahead, it looks as though the trail becomes trail and we get to go up in elevation from the around 6,000ft we've been at since about Silver City.  It'll be exciting to see what else New Mexico will throw at us,  I'm looking forward to it!

Road walking to the arch