Mr. Roboto and I had just started the hike down into the Elk Creek drainage, perhaps four miles in. There’s a 2,000-foot drop from the trailhead to the bottom before you start the 4,000 foot climb out the other end, which we’d done together on a different trip in the opposite direction a few years ago. Even at 10,000 feet, the trail was hot and dry, and we were both happy we were going down instead of up.
We came across a guy working his way up. “How’s it going?” we asked. We’re both experienced backpackers, especially Mr. Roboto–we’re comfortable outdoors and expect to meet other people like ourselves.
“This is the worst day of my life,” he said. “I haven’t eaten in a day and a half.”
The next day, I asked Rob why neither of us offered the guy some food. Rob seemed surprised that he hadn’t even thought about it, perplexed. He hadn’t asked us for food, and if he had we’d immediately have given him some of ours. But alone, you plan for contingences. It is expected of you. And alone, you take responsibility for whatever happens.
Mr. Roboto and I separated at the top of the other end of Elk Creek, up around 12,600 feet. He was going back down to explore the Vestal Peak trail, and I was off for Sections 22-24 of the Colorado Trail/Continental Divide Trail. Rob was going to pick me up at the other end 50 miles and a six-hour drive later. His parting words to me were “don’t miss your turn,” which was not funny since we both knew I’d missed a turn a few years ago exactly where we were standing at that moment and gotten lost and 20 miles off course and lived an epic hike. https://georgeschools.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/isis-not/?preview=true
In the few minutes between when Rob had left and I could sling my pack up, a young guy appeared out of nowhere, eyes big and bouncing around like he’d had way too much coffee and was very happy about that. I asked if he was through-hiking the CT, but he said he was a climber, on his way to summit Vestal. I wished him luck and started off eastward, but then stopped when I saw he wasn’t turning down the same trail as Rob to Elk Creek, and instead was continuing on straight up the ridgeline, my wrong turn from years ago. “Can you get to Vestal that way?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “you can get anywhere your legs will take you, I guess,” and then his eyes sort of widened a little more when he saw the trail heading down to Elk Creek perpendicularly between us and said “I’m about to miss my turn, aren’t I?” Life is full of ironies.
I camped that evening near a tarn (you can see my little tent below), patiently waiting for my body to get used to the altitude. I’d travelled only sixteen miles in a day and a half.
As hikers get older, almost every conversation includes the embarrassed caveat that “I hike really slow,” a bit like explaining that your erections aren’t what they used to be. I have struggled for a couple of years with my pre-hike expectations being disappointed by my on-trail performance and decided that this trip I would plan for the slowest pace imaginable, and then add on one additional day. Mr. Roboto was going to be by coincidence at my exit point very late on August 1st, so I just worked backwards and gave myself a start date of July 25th.
I don’t know why I do things that don’t make sense at all afterwards. This happens to me very often, to look back and think “what was I thinking?” I want to say there’s something wrong with me, but it’s better to say that’s just how I operate. Mr. Roboto’s math is better than mine, and he kept asking me if I thought I had enough food for a 7-8 day hike. He mentioned a couple of times that if I got done early I could sort of hang out up on Snow Mesa, or perhaps hike on a bit more and ascend San Luis Peak until he showed up. Me, I just wanted to walk, and my pack had everything in it that I felt like carrying. What was his problem?
By a series of events we will not go into here, Rob and I had begun my hike one day early. I mentioned to him as we left the trailhead that now it was an 8-9 day hike, which did not really register as a problem–I was ready to walk. Robert gave me a sideways glance, and there was nothing to do about it now, so off we went.
Hiking the CT is pretty much just coming up on a very big uphill stretch, thinking “fuck, that’s a big climb,” making it to the top faster than you thought you would, and then starting downhill on the other side . . . where you then see the next very big uphill stretch, say “fuck” again, and continue like that until you finish.
I’d originally planned on camping the next day at Cataract Lake because it looked awesome on the map, but I made it there by noon, where it did look awesome but once you start hiking you just want to get as far as you can each day and you can’t stop at noon, and so I continued onward.
This is the point where I suddenly realized I would finish four days ahead of schedule. I should have stopped at the lake and just enjoyed it for a day. I’ve never really done that, hiked someplace and just hung out. I suppose I could have maybe gone fishing if I’d had a pole, or read a book if I’d brought one, but those things have weight and have to be carried, and so of course I had neither. Plus, the CT here bounces around between 12 and 13,000 feet, and there is absolutely no shade, even in your tent. You can stop when you’re tired, set up your tent, but it’s way too hot to stay inside it, and so you sit outside it with flies trying to get inside your eyes and nose. It is not a Rocky Mountain High. I’d like to be able to just chill, but I don’t really know how.
Somewhere in there I passed the highest point on the Colorado Trail, which is a sort of arbitrary milestone in some ways, but on the ground it is so very real. It is way up there, all out in the open to the sky, so big. I was alone, but then “Burner,” one of those impossibly fresh-looking young girls hiking the whole CT showed up, heading the opposite direction. We chatted a bit, then other young women from her flexible group showed up on their way south. I asked about water the way she had come, and she said “I have plenty, take some of mine.” You feel your age, but also your gratitude for just being there, with these people who have so much ahead of them. She took my picture and I took her water, and then I was off.
This is the part of the CT where there is no water, for quite a stretch. I did find a snow bank to scrape some virgin snow into my squeeze bag, which made me happy. The snow is just there, and you have only to take it, and you have water. The Colorado Trail Foundation has an abandoned “yurt” somewhere up there, and that was my goal for the day. Mostly because there was supposed to be water there. The yurt is perhaps 5 miles from the finish, and so when I found it I knew I was almost done.
There was a family camped in the broad meadow there, and I felt so sorry for the father. He was ready to go up high, where I’d come from. He’d got them all that far, but it was clear that his overweight wife and unathletic sons weren’t going any further. I talked with him a bit while the wife and sons pretended I wasn’t there, and then went up above the meadow to pitch my tent. That evening I had two young elk play-fighting in front of my tent, and coyotes periodically howling to each other across the expanse, going intermittently silent as suddenly as they had begun.
As I left the next morning I passed the family still at their campsite, and the father said they’d straightened out their organization and that mom and the youngest son would be returning to the trailhead, to meet up with them later near Ouray. Seeing my opportunity, I asked him if she might be able to give me a ride if I was still at the trailhead when they got there, and from Ouray I could catch the train to Durango. But I could see she was now pretending extra hard that I wasn’t there and so decided to drop it. I couldn’t see how she was going to make it back to the trailhead as it was, or how the father and other son would make it over what I’d just come through.
A couple of miles from the Spring Creek trailhead you drop back below tree line and stay there, and lose that air and light that feels like it is projecting your mind out over the mountains with it. It is just hard walking, then. I ran into a flock of sheep blocking the trail down. They stared at me dumbly, and then suddenly leapt explosively to each side of the trail, leaving me to quietly pass through the middle like Moses parting the Red Sea. I crossed a couple of other hikers going the other way a bit further down, and they told me about a wonderful trail angel feeding hikers at the trailhead, and about the last shuttle into town at 12:30.
Hiking those last miles, I’m calculating the odds. Maybe the mother and son would make it there and be so happy to be out that they’d give me a lift to Ouray. Maybe somebody else from Durango would be shuttling someone to the trailhead and then let me hitch a ride back with them. I had no idea how far either of those destinations was. Maybe I should just keep walking, see Snow Mesa and climb San Luis, and just hang out for four days in the mountains until Rob picked me up–I had plenty of food, but no map. But if none of those things worked out, I needed to be on that last shuttle into Lake City. I didn’t think I could kill four days just hanging out. I get bored easy.
I stopped and chatted with the trail angel, who had set up an enormous spread of grilled burgers and hotdogs and drinks, just as a way of paying forward what trail angels had done for him several years ago when he’d hiked the AT and PCT and been ravenous for meat and something cold to drink and companionship. “You want food? Grab a burger, the toppings are here, I’ve got cold Cokes and even beer if you want.” He introduced me around, his grandson was there, and I unslung my pack and took a seat among the small crowd. There was a pretty hiker from the Czech Republic there, and the trail angel was definitely more interested in talking to her than to me. She wanted to know how I got my trail name, but how do you explain to a pretty Czech that “Honey Badger is pretty badass” https://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg? She was amazed by the generosity of the food and spirit and landscape; one of the best parts of backpacking is meeting people from other countries who are seeing us at our best.
Sitting there, I was clear in my mind that I was not going to make anyone else suffer the consequences of my poor planning, not beg a ride. I’d catch the shuttle into Lake City and figure out my next step from there. And just when I’d decided this, a father and son who’d been there eating burgers after their hike out asked if I wanted a lift into town. I hadn’t even really spoken directly to them before–I guess I may have been talking more with that Czech girl, myself. But Giles and his son Nick took me the half hour into town, and it was one of the nicest rides I’ve ever had. Nick, who was maybe 13 and very well spoken, wanted to know about my backpacking, and I wanted to know about his, and before not very long I knew he loved running and had learned to snorkel in the Keys last summer and that Giles was a lawyer and that if everything they’d learned about my life in that short trip was true, they thought I’d made some very good choices in life. I could tell they felt uncomfortable just letting me step out of their car into a strange little town with nothing but my backpack.
Lake City has one main street and a couple of side roads, and is full of wonderfully preserved houses from the mid-1800’s. I wasn’t walking around figuring things out for three minutes when the first little church lady walked up to me and said “you’re a backpacker! Do you need some help?” She was about four feet tall and trim, full of information and excitement but somehow her sense of orientation had given out over the years living in this one-road town. “Well, the church annex is just down that way, and they can give you information about where to get a shower and camp,” she said. “It’s just down this street perhaps two blocks, on your right . . . or maybe your left,” she said, staring into space. “Just look for the church, and then it is across the alley.”
I made it another block and ran into “Hayseed,” who was hiking the entire CT and was also looking for a place to pitch his tent. We stood there on the corner talking with our backpacks on and looking scruffy when another church lady pulled up and rolled down her window. “You’re backpackers. Do you need some help?” She was driving with an oxygen tube running across her nose, but she was dressed stylishly, like my mother-in-law, and her hair was done. “See the church steeple there? The annex is right there. They’ll fix you up.”
So Hayseed and I walk into the unlocked annex and find a large group area with tables and chairs and donated food and water and place to charge your cell phone. Eventually a young husband and wife with three kids, also hiking in sections the whole CT, come in, and both Hayseed and I are amazed at these people hiking all these miles with children between maybe 8 and twelve years old, kids who don’t say much but never complain and seem comfortable with who they are. Then a young girl enters who has apparently been in and out of the annex most of the day. She’s 14 or 15, says she is hiking the CT but needs her dad to send her money but her phone is locked, or something like that. There’s a third church lady now, who can see clearly what a bad idea it is for a 15-year-old girl to wander around alone far from home surrounded by scruffy strangers like me and Hayseed saying she needs her dad to send her money. Church Lady 3 takes her under her wing and steps outside with her to “talk details,” and I would be very surprised if that girl didn’t end up sleeping that night at Church Lady 3’s house.
Reverend Jason came by to say hello. A young full-bearded guy, just welcoming us and showing us around and making sure we had everything we needed. We talked places to pitch a tent and get a shower, and the family said they were just down the road at the Elkhorn RV Park, where they could pitch their tents on a nice grassy lawn and get showers and soap and a towel for $25. Reverend Jason asked if anyone would like an espresso, and I have never in my life said no to that. He asked if I was into board games, because on Monday there was a big hiker’s potluck dinner with food donated by the community, and afterward he did a sort of seminar on one board game or another because that’s what he was in to. I realized later that although this was Saturday, he never mentioned anything about Church services on Sunday. I guess he knew that we already knew where the church was and that if we wanted to attend, we just would. He knows my God.
I pitched my tent at Elkhorn where Linda and Allen were very, very nice to me, treating me a like a lost cousin, although she charged me $32 instead of the $25 she’d charged the family. I’d charged my phone up now, and although I didn’t have cell service I was able to email home to say I was ok, and then to email Mr. Roboto. Rob was going to be in Lake City on the 1st because he is part of a list of people who volunteer to shuttle CT hikers, and he was going to pick some people up who were leaving their car where I had started, and then he would drop them off where I had exited so that they could hike back to their car. I had decided that I would not ask Rob to make that trip twice because of my mistake, but I did ask him to check his list and see if there were any shuttlers in my area who I could pay to take me to Durango.
Wonderful things happen to me that I do not feel I deserve. It is not that I think I am a bad person; I just don’t get sometimes when people are spontaneously wonderful to me for no reason at all. Small acts of grace. Plus, I am reluctant to ask for help. Burner did not know me at all, but she gave me water unbidden when water was precious. The trail angel, the pretty Czech who spoke her heart about what she was seeing and was interested, Giles and Nick volunteering me a ride and taking me into their lives for a little bit, the church ladies and Reverend Jason. I had not asked Mr. Roboto for help, but he answered back seconds after I’d hit “send”:
“I’ll be there by 9.”
My Name is SCHOOLS 