In Salida

We are in Salida today (Friday, sept 2) for a day an a half off. We just finished a really fast section from Creede to Salida, and i know I didn't blog in Creede, so I will try to fill you in completely, but the library has a 30 minute limit per day, so this might be brief, I'll try to add detail tomorrow.

We left Wolf Creek Pass a week ago Tuesday after Vanessa and Aarons' wedding, which was a lot of fun (congrats to them, again!) and did 14 miles the first day. The next four days we did over 25 miles each day with almost 100% of the time spent above 12000 ft. I think the big thing I remember is that the San Juans are the most beautiful mountain range we've encountered yet, there are mountains in literally every direction, and I threw up my breakfast twice, probably due to altitude sickness. Other than that it was a really hard section with lots of rain and I wish we had scheduled an extra day but overall it was really nice.

I'm sure one of the highlights of the section for Liv was running into two of her coworkers in the backcountry, which I also think is pretty fun because it isn't really the place you usually see anyone you know. My highlight was seeing two moose early in the morning at Squaw Pass (I was alone as I was trying to hike a few miles before eating to see if I could hold the food down better after warming up). We also got to hike really close to the Rio Grande Pyramid and the Window, which form a really cool ridgeline, though it was raining when we were walking by so we didn't try to bushwack through the Window.

We reached the hwy between Creede and Lake City last Saturday and we were trying to hitch to Creede, but we couldn't get a ride so we took a ride from some very nice people to Lake City, CO for the evening instead. When we got to town we went out for pizza. At the pizza place we were offered a ride to Creede in the morning, which was very nice, and we talked to the owner for a while, who helped us find a cabin for the night. I only ate two slices of pizza and felt real queezy and I ended up vomiting at the cabin and being sick the next day for about 24 hours.

We got a ride to Creede on Sunday and then Liv's friend Katina came and picked us up and took us to South Fork, where we stayed at Katina and Joshs' house. I slept most of the day on the couch, so there isn't much to report but I am very grateful for the place to stay. Monday morning we went back to Creede and had breakfast before hiking out of town. We took it nice and easy leaving town and did 15 miles in the afternoon. The road out of town had a lot of jeep and 4x4 traffic and there were a lot of people that stopped to say hi and find out what we were doing. A man named Dominic was particularly interested in our gear and the CDT. I wish I would have showed him my tent (more on this).

That night we camped at the headwaters of Cochetopa Creek. When we arrived at camp I realized I did not have my tent and that I had left it at Katina and Josh's house in South Fork! The next morning I got up real early and hiked back to Creede. Katina had to leave work to drive me to South Fork to get my tent, which i was very grateful for. I had another breakfast in town and then hiked all the way back to where we had camped the night before, a round trip of 30 miles in 12 hours. From there I kept hiking in hopes that I could catch Liv and Joel before getting to Salida. After 7 more miles I ran into Gordon, who was camping at Stewart Creek with his camper. He offered me beer, chile, and hot dogs, which I could not pass up even though I wanted toget some more miles in that evening. He also fed my bacon and eggs for breakfast. It was definitely that best trail magic I have had on the trail so far and I hope Gordon enjoys the rest of this stay in Colorado before he heads back to Bali.

The Cochetopa hills section was pretty easy with short and well graded climbs. Water was a bit scarce but the longest dry section was 14 miles, which wasn't too hard to carry for. I did 35 miles during my round trip day to Creede (plus 2 hitchhiking miles), 33 miles the next day, and 31 miles yesterday. I still couldn't catch Liv and Joel, who camped 4 miles ahead of me last night and beat me to Monarch pass this morning by 45 minutes. We all hitched to town together a few hours ago and we are waiting on the hostel reception to open at 4pm so we can check in and take showers.

This was a beautiful section but had few outstanding views. It was mostly forest. I had much less rain than in the San Juans, which was nice, but now I have some nagging knee pain because the trail was very rocky. I only have three more minutes online, so I will wrap it up and either Liv or I will try to blog again tomorrow. We should be in Leadville by the end of the week. Hope everyone is well!