May 27, 2019

543 miles hiked

We woke up in Cuba and headed to the diner for breakfast as soon as they opened. I had a delicious green Chile chorizo burrito for breakfast and several other hikers were there. Radio and I iced our feet and did our resupply and then we headed to McDonalds to charge our phones and kill some time after checking out of the motel.

The walk out of Cuba started as a 8 mile road walk, then a crazy climb. We climbed 3,800 feet in under 14 miles and eventually camped in a meadow near the top of the mountain at 10,300 feet. There was snow, but it was pretty manageable and we were able to find a dry spot to camp. Tonight’s going to be a cold one, temperatures expected to hit 19 degrees. We tried to start a fire but eventually gave up, retreating to our warm sleeping bags. It was a cold one!

May 28, 2019

569 miles hiked

We woke up to frost covering everything and frozen water bottles. Luckily, Radio kept our shoes in a bag in the tent to keep them from freezing, which was nice. We got ready as quickly as we could (after sleeping in a bit) and headed out to the trail.

We hadn’t gone more than two tenths of a mile when we were hit with an icy marsh and river to cross. The snow melt had created a river over flow and I tried to get across by hopping from one grassy knoll to another, but eventually I had to break the thin layer of ice and stick my feet in - everyone got wet. I trudged through the “river” crossing and broke ice with every step, my feet losing feeling at each polar plunge.

The rest of the morning was spent hiking over snow on top of the mountain, and when we created and started descending, we were greeted with a beautiful meadow.

I found a Hawaiian shirt on the trail today, and remembered that Handful, a girl we had met a few times on the trail, wore one that looked like it. I picked it up anyway, hoping to catch her at Ghost Ranch, since we had just seen her yesterday.

I ended up running into Handful later that day at a water source - yes, we are back to cow troughs - and it turned out it was her shirt! Hopefully that earns me some hiker karma.

The rest of the day was spent climbing up and down and we ended up camping near a river bank the trail crossed over for about a mile.

May 29, 2019

583 miles hiked

I woke up early and read a few pages of my book, Lonesome Dove, that Wonder Woman turned me on to. I’m usually too tired to read much at night but lately I’ve been liking spending a few minutes waking up and reading under my warm sleeping bag.

We ran into a lot of other hikers today at the first water source - Morning Glory and Brock, and we also ran into Dan sooner than expected (he did more miles than us yesterday and we camped separately). We also met back up with Handful. What was really odd today about the landscape was the constant clicking of cicadas in the trees.

Later on we ran into Newt and Flaming Hot, and another older couple. We were on the dirt road alternate towards Ghost Ranch and there were at least 10 of us on the road!

We did a brief cross county to get to Ghost Ranch, and the cliffs and mesas were so beautiful, it was easy to see what inspired Georgia O Keefe for so many years. The buildings were beautiful adobe style buildings, but we got the vibe this was much more of an older person weekender trip rather than a resupply. We paid $5 each for our boxes and bought $12 lunch buffet tickets, and settled into a long table of other CDT hikers. All of them were bailing to Santa Fe to flip the San Juan’s and try to avoid the snow. Handful and Blasphemy were the only people who didn’t flip with a group of at least 15 hikers. The sudden exodus of everyone made me wonder, are we doing the right thing with the snow? But it didn’t make too much sense to me as getting to Chama (the next town) didn’t seem like it would be that difficult. The real snow starts in the San Juans, immediately after Chama. We will have at least a weeks worth of melt by then and have a choice between a few different routes, plus have our snow gear.

We got a cabin anyway, since campsites were $35 each (!), a bunk was a better deal as it included breakfast, especially when split with four people.

When we got to the room, cots on metal beds greeted us in a sparse, summer camp style dorm. We looked for the showers, which weren’t in the building, and then went back to ask about to location of the showers. Nina got a map marked up with shower locations, and set off to find one. Apparently none of the locations marked had showers, and one was nailed shut. She called to complain, and we were given an upgraded room (more like a suite with an attached bathroom and enough beds to sleep 7!). The new rooms were cute and cozy, it was just a little annoying to figure out the situation. We did find a really cute lounge room with a fireplace, lots of sofas, a kitchenette and a DVD player and rented a few cowboy movies from the library. We settled in with a lot of snacks and enjoyed the movie.

May 31, 2019

607 miles hiked​

We loaded up on the breakfast buffet and ran back into Hungry Cat, who booked it to make it to Ghost Ranch in time for breakfast.

After packing up we headed out a bit after 10 and were greeted immediately with a steep climb out of the canyon. It was beautiful but hot.

When we finally got out of the canyon we met a beautiful meadow. The trail itself was not well marked and we kept sinking into mud that sucked our shoes off our feet.

It took us so long to do our planned mileage for the day that we rolled up to camp as it was just getting dark - and it gets dark at 8:30.

June 1, 2019

634 miles hiked​

​I’ve had some kind of cold for the past few days, but today I was really feeling it in my head. Wonder Woman also has the same cold and is a few days ahead of me on it, and we’ve talked about how less it impact us being on trail. Sure, it’s annoying, but we’ve both been so sick that we would have worked from home and probably not done anything all day, but we can still walk over twenty miles without an issue. Right now the only annoyance is that my ears are constantly plugged.

Today we ran into a lot of snow, which really slowed us down. We had lunch at a lake, which was nice.

I was struggling today, trying to go as fast as I could as we had a big day planned - 27 miles. The trail was not well marked at all, and that slowed us down even more. We ended up looking for forest roads that could potentially cut off distance or if anything, be easy to follow.

We finally met up with Dan at the end of the day - we cranked the last 8 miles to a lake campground with a pavilion, and boy, was I feeling it. Apologies for what I said when I was cold/tired/hungry everyone. We cowboy camped in the center of the open shelter and luckily stayed dry, despite wind blowing in from all sides.

June 2, 2019

Approximately 658 miles hiked 

Today we started off at a good clip (a nice change) and had some beautiful views.

Most of the day was off of snow, thankfully, and we were able to make some miles.

At the end of the day we found ourselves postholing for miles, which was not fun. Since we can’t see the snow covered trail anyway, we’ve been making our own shorter routes following the trail with various degrees of success. At the end of the day we joined a forest road which we planned to take to our tent site, but the road was also covered in soft, sluggish snow. We hiked up to the ridge and were greeted with a beautiful view of the San Juan’s off in the distance. They were so massive it honestly sent a shiver of fear through my body, exhausted from the slog of snow we already dealt with today.

Walking along the dry mesa, we started to feel droplets of rain and immediately tried to find a place to set up our tents before it was raining.

We settled in at around 7 and made dinner and chatted through the thunder. 15 miles left until the border of Colorado, and 18 miles to the pass where we hitch to our next town, Chama, NM.

June 3, 2019 - Colorado Border/Chama, NM

Approximately 672 miles hiked

Our alarms woke us at 5:15, and we were packed and ready by 6:00 am. Thankfully, this morning was not as brutally cold as others have been, but we woke up in a cloud covering our tent site.

We ended up walking through fog for the first four or so miles. The snow was stressing me out, because we aren’t supposed to be post holing at 6:00 am, it’s just against the rules of nature! That’s what we get for having a warm morning, I suppose.

We trudged through the first couple miles and then came to a junction on the trail. The new CDT follows trail along the mountain, and there was also a forest road that was a bit higher on the ridge (less chance of snow) that we could also follow. Turns out that road was marked on the Ley maps as an alternate route. We ended up committing to the Ley purple route and I think it helped us get to town a bit faster. We made our own route somewhere between the Ley route and Guthook route in the beginning just following where there was less snow on the ridge line, and then ultimately followed the Ley route.

I was shocked at how fast we got to the border - it was 10:30 am, and the road was only a few miles past that. We crossed a railroad and watched as an old fashioned rail tour chugged along, the conductor blowing the steam whistle and waving at us.

We waited at the road for a hitch for a while - there weren’t many cars out at lunch on a Monday. With four people it’s even more difficult to get a ride. Thankfully an older couple in a big truck picked us up just as it started to rain, and took us to Chama.

While I was in the motel office getting our room sorted, it started hailing bad - grape sized balls from the sky covered the clear parking lot in just minutes. Was I happy to be inside and not standing on the side of the mountain road at Cumbres Pass for that!

The motel room we got ended up being a suite with two rooms and a kitchen - with a table and couch and three beds, we were living in luxury. We hosted a bunch of hikers and ate frozen pizza and Moscow mules.