High: Colorado Wildlife/Wildflowers
I already mentioned the herd of rams I meet just 3 miles into my hike, but the wildlife and wildflowers out here are truly amazing. One of my favorite encounters was when I was hiking up to Searle Pass looking for a campsite. The valley was beautiful and filled with beaver ponds but there wasn't any good flat ground to camp on. Eventually I went up the side of the slope to a small grove of trees to pitch my hammock. When I got up into the trees I heard some rustling and looked down to find a porcupine. But it wasn't just one porcupine it was a momma and a baby porcupine. They quickly retreated under one of the logs but I could still see their tail ends. I gave them their space but would go back to check on them and the baby stayed there the whole night.
The flowers are also unbelievable and vary so much with the terrain. The alpine flowers are incredible and create such colorful views up at the top. My favorite of the alpine flowers are the Forget-Me-Nots and its hard not to enjoy every time you see one of the Columbine. However there are lots of cacti out on the trail too in the dryer sections and they also have very colorful flowers. My favorWhite-Lined Sphinx moth and wow what a big moth that is! At least I'm not the only one who was fooled though because its also known as the Hummingbird Moth.ite day was when I was heading down a valley and saw at first what I thought was a strange looking hummingbird buzzing around some of the flowers. Satisfied that I had spotted a new type of hummingbird I had never seen I got into town to look it up. Turns out that it is a
Low: Scout the Dog
One of my days on the trail I had tried to spend a relaxing afternoon by a lake but found the water freezing cold, filled with small little worms and then the typical Colorado weather decided it would be a good time to hail on me. So I packed up my things and decided to just push on the last few miles to where I was hoping to camp. I came over a ridge and had a nice view down a number of switch backs down the side of this slope. Then I see this dog come bounding up the trail which I'm pretty sure was an Australian Shepard. It looked well taken care of an had a collar on but the owners must have been further down the trail. It headed up the trail towards me too a good look then decided to turn around and started bounding back down the trail. It seems to be pretty common for owners to leave their dogs off the leash and I figured this dog must have just outran its owner up the trail and turned back when it found me so I decided to name him Scout.
I kept hiking down the trail waiting to see Scout again and meet his owner. It could have been a mountain biker who was battling up the steep slope or maybe just a slower hiker who gives their dog a bit more freedom to run up ahead, but nobody ever came. I went even further down and started to get worried thinking up many different scenarios. Maybe this was a dog who got off its leash and I'd find the sobbing owners below trying to recover their lost dog. I certainly know that feeling well trying to chase down my dogs when they run away. Maybe this was a Lassie situation where Scout was trying to lead me back to its owner who had tumbled off the trail and I'd have to help get them to safety. Maybe I would make it all the way to the trailhead and just see a missing dog sign. The possibilities were endless.
I kept walking and walking hoping to see someone or something but nothing. I got all the way down to the trailhead and no Scout, no owners, no sign, just 3 empty cars. I felt so sad and didn't know what to do. I hoped maybe the owners were heading down the hill in the dog just caught up and they got in their car and left before I got down there but I was moving fairly fast down that hill. That whole night I stayed up worrying about the poor lost dog but there really wasn't anything I could do. I like to think Scout made his way back home but I guess I'll never know.
High: Meeting Continental Divide Trail Hikers
While I am certainly at the front end of the pack for the Colorado Trail this year and haven't had the chance to hike with too many other CT thru-hikers I have met all sorts of other folks along the way. From mountain bikers, to section hikers, couples out for a few days, to people hiking the new Collegiate Peaks Loop along the Colorado Trail. My favorite of all though was running into the Continental Divide Trail Hikers. The best thing is that almost half of them had hiked the PCT the same year I did in 2012. So I got the chance to meet a number of folks who I saw their trail name in the registries the whole way but never got to meet in person. It was great getting trail intel from them regarding snow conditions, the best spots to look forward to, etc. However the CDT is very much a choose your own adventure trail so many people had been hiking different routes and if fun to hear some of the different stories.
However the best was one day when I was heading down a dirt road on my way up to Tennessee Pass. I spotted to thru-hikers down the road and remember thinking to myself wouldn't it be funny if this was someone I hiked with. Sure enough it was, I ran into Smiles who I hiked a good amount of central California with on the PCT and hadn't seen since. I was so much fun to catch up, talk about the rest of our PCT hikes and what we had been up to lately. That is one this I truly love about becoming a thru-hiker is the community. You could tell with every backpacker you meet out here how much they love it and you can be in the absolute middle of nowhere and run into someone you know. How cool is that!
High: Climbing to the Top of Colorado
I hadn't planned any side trips along the way and figured when the opportunity presented itself I would go for it. That certainly was the case when I learned that Mt. Elbert, the tallest peak in Colorado, was just a 3.5 mile side trip off the Colorado Trail. So I adjusted my timing so that I could camp right at the head of the side trail and get an early start (since they say you don't want to be up in the exposed zone when the afternoon thunderstorms hit).
Well an early start I got, hitting the trail at 5:30 AM. It was pretty cool being the only hiker out there and getting to leave behind my heavy pack. It was kinda funny since as I started heading up I was taking off layer by layer as I got hotter from the climb but sure enough I was putting them back on as the trail got cooler and cooler heading up into the clouds. I was just near the treeline when the sun broke over the Mosquito Range to the east providing some awesome sunrise views. I kept pushing up and luckily there wasn't must snow at all covering the trail. However sure enough the one that I did come across I ended up losing the trail trying to avoid some of the steeper spots and by then was close enough to the summit that I just walked up the rocks the rest of the way.
Low: Mosquito Attacks
I remember on the first day of my trip I was shocked how few mosquitoes I had run into. The next morning I met two girls from Colorado hiking the trail who assured me there wouldn't be many because the mosquito season is mostly in June after the snow melt and they rarely go up in the high country. Well let me tell you, that was a lie. I must say they really haven't been that bad and maybe I'm struggling to come up with some lows for this trip but there have certainly be a few instances when they were particularly rough.
One day I had been hiking through a hot dry section and was so dirty just hoping for a nice shady spot by a creek to cool off and clean up in. I found the perfect spot right by this beautiful cool creek. I saw there were mosquitoes nearby but figured I could deal with them as I had before. They lured me in thinking they wouldn't bug me too much and then once I got all settled with my gear unpacked they attacked. They simply swarmed me biting all over. I had to struggle to pack up my stuff and flee the scene but they followed for quite a ways before I was safe. Earlier they would just come one at a time but these were strategic mosquitoes which kept me away from the nice creek-side rest I hoped for.
Another day it was getting close to the end of the day and I had just passed some lakes. I knew the bugs would be bad there so didn't try to set up camp and kept moving along. That didn't deter the bugs though. They found me and stayed with me. Honestly I must have had 30 bugs circling me for almost 2 miles of hiking. I don't think any of them gave up I had to kill every last one. Eventually I would hold out my arm to lure them where I could swat them easily. These were some of the most persistent mosquitoes I had ever seen!
High: Mt. Princeton Hot Springs
After getting a taste of how awesome hot springs were on my PCT trip I knew I couldn't pass up another opportunity even if it was at a resort. One of the small towns the Colorado Trail passes through is Mt. Princeton Hot Springs right by the awesome chalky cliffs of Mt. Princeton. It had been a miserably hot day hiking along the base of Mt. Princeton and since you couldn't scale down the cliffs the trail took a long round about trip out into the hot dry plains along the roadside. So you can imagine how I was looking for a nice oasis to treat me well. You first pass by coming down the road overlooking the pool and it looked pretty packed with kids and I almost passed it by until I saw the less busy lower pools. The place wasn't cheap but it was so much worth it. Honestly probably the best part was just getting to take a shower with soap and shampoo since it had been 8 days since my last shower in Breckenridge.
Once in the pool area it was truly heavenly. They had a longer pool heated to around 90 degrees and a deeper one kept above 100. Both were fed by the natural hot springs in the area and the sides of the pool were insulated to keep the heat in. Better yet they had the Chalk Creek flowing right along the side with cool refreshing meltwater from the mountains so you could cool off if you were getting too hot. Needless to say I made quite a few rotations from the cool creek to the hot pool to the hotter pool. It felt so refreshing! You have no idea how great it is to just float after you have been carrying a pack for 200 miles. My feet were rejoicing. After I had my fill I then wandered down the road to find a campsite and passed by some of the most amazing houses I have ever seen. Mt. Princeton definitely tops the list of places I want to retire to because there was just a nice quiet dirt road dotted with modest little home build right in with the natural environment. The creek and fishing ponds on one side the majestic white chalky cliffs on the other. It would be a wonderful place to wind up, plus you could be a trail angel to all the Colorado Trail hikers!Low: Postholing My Way Down from Georgia Pass
I won't go into to much details as I have mentioned the difficulty of postholing plenty of times now on my blog but this one was probably the worst. That morning my friend Marc and I had climbed up into Georgia Pass and hiked up and over to Whale Peak a nearby 13er. We went back to our site and Marc headed back only after the sky let out a nice blanket of hail on us. I figured all I had left to do was get back over the pass and it would be smooth sailing down to a nice campsite. Wrong! While the eastern side of the pass only had a few snow field that could easily be dodged the western side was a long level stretch in the forest which did not seem to want to drop in elevation. Therefore it was a good 2 or 3 miles of sinking deep into the snow, plus it was afternoon by then so I had the great soft snow to deal with. Right when I had had enough and my feet were soaked the sky decided it would spit some more rain at me as well. Needless to say I was overjoyed when the trail finally started to drop in elevation and the snow let up a bit but boy I certainly was not expecting that.
High: Aspen Groves
Finally I know I have already given a shout out to the wildlife and wildflowers of the trail but I need tomake special note of my favorite part of the Colorado wilderness; the aspen grove. Aspen are my favorite tree and I remember becoming mesmerized by them on my trip to the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. Aspen have amazing bright green round leaves that flicker back and forth in the breeze. There white trunks with the smooth bark and marks the look like eyes from where previous branches once sprouted also make them quite distinct. Aspen also regenerate by sending out underground shoots so one single grove of tree could all actually be one single organism where each tree will have the same DNA. Pretty cool huh! Anyways the way they can scatter the light and illuminate the trail is so fascinating. They allow enough light down to the forest floor too so that you can often have wildflowers like lupine growing underneath for a beautiful scene of purple, green and white. Also you can always spot the aspen groves on the hill side because there will be a bright green patch in a see of evergreen, or sometimes they will even cover the entire hill. They are such a cool tree and my favorite nights are always tying my hammock up between to aspen staring up at their leaves (which isn't easy because sometimes they don't have thick trucks or are very densely packed in the forest). They are great trees and I can't wait for the fall to see them change colors!
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