[Day 42] Snow Mesa

The day started pleasant. I was up by 7am, doing final prep on my gear. I ate breakfast (some mini chocolate and powdered donuts, a vanilla yogurt, and half a Monster) in bed, and I felt anxious to get back on trail.

Debra, the motel owner, knocked on my door at 8:30am and offered me a ride to Spring Creek Pass at 9:15am. That made life easy.

I was dropped off around 10am. After chatting with Debra for a while, getting my photo, and hugs goodbye (she was very generous and helpful to me in town), I was off. Soon enough, I was atop a snow mesa. It was a few miles of flat walking over snowfields with intermittent reveal of trail.

Exposure was high today. Tree line was nonexistent. The first half of the day played a game of “is it thunder or a jet airliner?” Luckily, the big and closer occurrences were jets, until later in the day.

After the snow mesa and some 12,500-foot ridge line walking, I walked over undulations of snow mounds in some forests, regularly post holing and hobbling over downed trees as I went. I found a nice spring and decided to lay low for a bit. I read the weather right, and sure enough an all out thunder and hail storm broke out. It went on for an hour; I sat leaned against a tree hydrating and eating gummy Lifesavers.

After 15 minutes of no thunder, I continued hiking. I had a few repetitions of 1,000 plus foot climbing out of slushed snow valleys heavy with downed trees, then dropping back down 1,000 feet. The trail was poorly graded, and it was a straight line up a mountainside at times. My biggest climb was a 1,900-foot ascent to 12,900 feet. In the lower valley, I became so fed up with the thigh-deep post holing that I was yelling profanities at every step.

Once out of the coverage of the valley, I traded the thigh-high snow from muddy, grassy climbs straight up the mountain pass. I stopped nearly every 20 steps to catch my breathe and look at my heading towards the pass.

After the big pass of the day, I dropped down to where the Creede Alternate rejoins the CDT. Had I taken this alternate, I would have been to this position some seven or eight days earlier, completely ignorant to the soul-sucking struggle of the snowy San Juan’s. I did give some of my soul to the San Juan’s, and it’s both good and bad — time will tell which prevails. The Creede Alternate had clearly been taken by some other hikers, and footsteps in the snow ahead indicated so. My trailblazing had reached its end (for now).

I was going to camp at the Creede Alternate Junction, but I decided to make one more pass. I have two mountain passes before a significant drop below 10,000 feet for about fifty miles. Snow shouldn’t be a concern for the next couple of days. Atop the mountain pass, rain was evidently falling in the mountains behind me, and the clouds were blowing my way. As I struggled with the decision to setup camp, thunder rang out. Without second thought, I headed straight down the other side of the pass towards a tree line about a mile and ahead.

I hit the tree line, pitched my tent at a reasonable spot, and crawled in. Hail and rain started heavy as I zipped up my tent door, continuing for two hours straight. I cooked up some Knor Alfredo pasta mixed with Idahoan mashed potatoe powder. It was a solid dinner coupled with a Twinky and a packet of tuna.

I look forward to dropping elevation tomorrow. Hopefully, I will awake at a more decent morning hour to make some mileage.

Signing off,

Zeppelin / fReaK (ON a leash)