We’ve made it over Cottonwood Pass, and it will be dark soon so we really need to find a place to camp. We find a less-than-ideal spot up here at 12,000 feet, and Rob and Ed have their tents up in a jiffy and are starting dinner. They have an obscene amount of energy.
Me, I am standing in some scrub, looking at the ground. I can’t decide whether it is flatter and more rock-free here, or in an identical spot ten feet away. I shuffle over to the other spot, and spend five minutes staring at it. Then I shuffle back to the first spot and stare some more. I am too tired to decide.
After a while of standing there, I see Rob silently considering me. Rob and Ed are eating dinner now. Rob is fairly inscrutable, but I believe I can hear him thinking “is this fucker getting ready to die on me? That’s going to complicate the rest of the hike.” Imagining what Rob is thinking is one of my favorite pastimes when I hike with him.
I finally decide that one spot is as good as another, silently pitch my tent and crawl inside. I stare at the ceiling, hear Ed say “hey George, you have to see this sunset!,” and Rob asks “are you going to eat?” I say “yeah, in a minute.” I know they are looking out for me. I am unconscious in two minutes.
I was fine the next morning–well, fine enough. The stretch from Cottonwood Pass south to Tincup Pass, about 16 miles in all, is the best of Collegiates West. It is all above tree line–12 to 13,000 feet–and the views are stunning.
There are still a few snow fields to traverse; the one below is at Sanford Saddle. Early in the morning, the surface is frozen solid, so you want to hit it once it has warmed a bit so your boots get a grip, but not warmed so much that you sink through. I bought micro-spikes for an ice crossing years ago, and have so far carried them across many miles of beautiful mountain scenery without ever using them. I intend to continue avoiding the need to use them; who wants to cross an ice field where a slip will send you sliding . . . downhill? Like, way downhill.
That snow is deceptive, all nice and smooth like that. But most of it is covering scree and boulders, and occasionally you’d step in the footprint in front of you and sink up to your crotch. Sinking up to your crotch is exhausting, and so you soon find yourself pretending that you are crossing eggshells: plant your foot gently, shift your weight onto it gradually, wait to fall through, and then when you don’t you take your next step.
In five days, we met no one travelling south like us on the Colorado Trail (CT), but we met wave after wave of amazing people hiking the 3,000 mile Continental Divide Trail (CDT) northbound. We had been unable to start our southbound trip sooner because of snow in Lake Ann Pass, and they had been halted by snow in the passes south of us in the San Juan Mountains. They’d each walked perhaps 1,000 miles so far, alone or with varying temporary partners, but had bunched up waiting. When the high passes opened, it was like opening the corral. We’d cross perhaps 20 a day, energetic, enthusiastic, and very happy to be doing what they were doing. Rob, who has thru-hiked both the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail (his wife won’t let him thru-hike the CDT. “Enough’s enough!” I also enjoy imagining what Sue says to Rob), remarked that thru-hikers were a different breed now from when he had hiked his thousands of miles: highly trained, incredibly fit, true “world-class athletes.” Three thousand miles is a long way to walk, and we knew that only a small percentage (about 150 complete the thru-hike each year) would actually make it all the way to Chief Mountain Canadian Customs Post, but these amazing people had already hiked a third of the way and were to a person enthusiastic to keep walking. Well, except that one guy–he was cooked. We talked to this tired, down guy a bit, and after we’d parted I said “I don’t think that one is going to make it” to general agreement.
My Name is SCHOOLS 