[Day 99] The Pintlers

I had some clear skies with distant clouds this morning after the rainy night. No doubt, the rain was on its way. From the my ridge line camp, I head into the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness, a jewel of the Northern Rockies featured glacially carved tarn-pocked cirques and the likes.

Analyzing my map, I saw opportunity for an off trail cut off that hit a couple lakes and saved some pointless up and down. Jonathan Ley’s CDT maps confirmed this. I haven’t addressed this too much, but I use a combination of GPS digital maps for daily navigation. These include FarOut Guides’ CDT map, Gaia GPS, and Jonathan Ley’s CDT maps through Avenza Maps. The later two are my favorite and go-to.

• FarOut is the most popular amongst hikers — a noisy crowd-sourced GPS map featuring user commentary on waypoints. In my opinion, the app is essentially social media on the trail. I only use it on occasion if I am very unsure of a water source or need information about a closure or town. I have come to quite despise the application.
• Gaia GPS is the most free form mobile GPS tool I have found, whereby you download GPS route files from online sources and upload them to a map. I typically pull routes from caltopo.com or fastestknowntime.com. Then, the tool allows for layers like road networks, precipitation forecasting, snow pack prediction, and even cellular reception maps. One of my favorite layers is the mine and resources map, which shows current and retired claims. Gaia is my typical navigation tool.
• Jonathan Ley is an accomplished long-distance hiker and map-maker who made a premier set of free paper maps for the CDT. Those maps were the gold standard until the large-scale adoption of GPS on the trail. Since the domination of GPS, the maps have been converted to a digital format where the user can overlay their current GPS position on Ley’s hand-drawn red and purple lines. This is the first map I open in the morning. I read Ley’s map comments assigned to numbered waypoints along the map, which provide a critical overview of expectations for the day. Ley also documents some phenomenal alternate routes to capture hidden gems or make shortcuts on the trail. How did this guy manage to make such detailed and extensive maps? I thank him for this invaluable tool and the tremendous time spent fiddling in the backcountries of the Continental Divide to develop these routes. When I enter a critical or resource intensive stretch of trail, such as the San Juan’s of Southern Colorado, I carry printed copies of Ley’s paper maps as backup.

On my off trail route, I cut to Sawed Cabin Lake and then Oreamnos Lake over a steep cut up over the saddle of a mountain finger. The gorgeous alternate managed to cut off a mile of trail walking. At a break beside Oreamnos, I was surprised to find a tick crawling on my thigh. He drowned quickly with a flick into the lake. Over the lake, two bald eagles took low passes on the water surface.

The off trail route led me to my first pass — Pintler Pass. Pintler Pass dropped me down to Stephen’s Lake, and I climbed right up to the next pass — Rainbow Pass. Atop Rainbow Pass, the temperature dropped and thunder let out. Bitter cold rain ensued for four hours as I dropped down into Washington-like deep forest. I was cold and wet — very wet. To keep warm, movement was critical. I went straight for Warren Lake Pass. There wouldn’t be any water breaks today. Hail had piled up on trail along this climb. Unavoidable deep bowls made by tree roots in the trail cradled a soup of pine needles, mud, and hail.

After Warren Lake, I descended into the most lush, deep forest I’ve seen on the CDT. The further I dropped along the west fork of La Marche Creek, the higher the understory of foliage grew. By my final crossing of the creek, the foliage was above my waist. As you might imagine, my legs were clean, but I was soaked wet and cold. My hands were locked up and soggy. I figure the temperature was below 35°F. There was no stopping. I started the climb up to Cutaway Pass. The climbs are my major opportunity to warm myself; descents don’t get me breathing enough.

I found a camp along a creek and called it. Everything was slow. My hands were useless in pitching my tent and preparing dinner, and I was losing soggy skin the harder I tried. I decided to skip a major dinner and went straight for hot chocolate. The warm cup quickly recovered my hands. I hung my food bag, entered a wet tent, and slipped into a wet sleeping bag.

Signing off,

Zeppelin / fReaK (ON a leash)