It feels like the wrong way somehow, hiking south. With the exception of the entire Montana/Idaho section, all of this hike will have been southbound, a direction that I've never traveled on a long trail with the exception of the far shorter John Muir Trail.
Continental Divide Trail 2020
Daily dispatches and photos from the Continental Divide Trail, a 2975-mile footpath stretching along the Rocky Mountains from Mexico to Canada.
Doubt
The aftermath of the recent snow storm may be only a distant memory but the cold that it ushered in has persisted the last few nights, despite the eminently warm and comfortable days that have separated them. And as the cold lingers into the morning, a new pattern has begun to emerge: a slower start to the day as we resist the moment of emerging from our cozy down cocoons…
Wind River
The day’s writing done, my light went out and was immediately replaced by starlight. Even from among our sheltered stand of trees, there was enough of a clearing to stare up at them from the comfort of my hammock while I listened to the breeze run through the tips of the pines. It's the way you dream of days ending.
Navigation: Getting from A to B
How do you know where you're going? It's a pretty simple (and important) question, and one that's among the most common we hear (perhaps second only to “Have you seen any bears?” Answer: yes). So, here goes—a crash course in finding your way along the CDT, with something to keep both the new school and the old school happy.
Open Season
Hanging from trees a few steps off a dirt road, the sound coming toward us as we packed up was not surprising. Growing louder, an ATV and a 4-wheeler came around the bend and the two hunters aboard stopped to chat with us about whether we'd seen any other hunters or any big game recently.
Yosemite East
Did we miss something? Not five minutes down the trail from where we'd slept, it looked like a great hand had swept through the forest and toppled everything in its path, both the living and the dead. What looked like perfectly healthy trees, some several feet in diameter, lie one upon the other like match sticks that had spilled from their box.
Stone and Smoke
Of all the mountains I've spent time in, two have held a particularly special place: the High Sierra are in my heart, but the Adirondacks of my home are in my blood. What we'd see today had me wondering how much room I would need to make on that list for the Wind River Range.
The Strife We Choose
True story: I haven't showered in 9 days. That’s not real hardship, actually. Had I not stopped to count I wouldn't have given it a second thought. The trees that began to appear strewn across the trail in great piles, however, had the feel of a much more tangible kind of hardship—for the forest, for the dedicated Forest Service personnel tasked with clearing it, and for the trail system itself…
Back to Basics
Only a day and a half removed from when we stepped off the trail and into some rest in the town of Pinedale, yet returning this morning it felt like something subtle had changed. Fall, it seemed, had arrived almost overnight. The meadows were a touch more golden, the bushes surrounding lakes a brighter shade of autumn yellow…
What About Bears?
Remember this post? Yeah, me neither. Aside from navigation, it's true that questions (read: fears) about bears seem to be at the top of most people’s minds, but the reality is I’d be sorely disappointed to hike a long trail without seeing them. Having seen bears perhaps a hundred times in the wild, I can say with certainty that it never gets old.
Cirque
How could it end like this? A day of jaw-dropping scenery reduced to a twilight scramble over a nearly impassable jungle gym of blowdown. But in the interest of not burying the lead let's rewind and get to the good part first.
Out of the Frying Pan
If cursing were an Olympic sport, we could have medaled. I wish I could say that rejoining the CDT meant that the blowdown of yesterday evening would be nothing but a painful memory, but to no one’s surprise and everyone’s chagrin, the forest around the first bend of trail looked like the same nuclear devastation.
Wind of Change
As if bemused by the accelerating pace of our hectic lives, the natural rhythm of the world moves ever onward, inexorably slowly, one season slipping into another almost without our notice. It's one of the many small joys of trail life—the rare attentiveness to even subtle changes in the world around us that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Southeastern
Pancakes, coffee, sausage, eggs, pancakes, hashed browns, and more pancakes. That's the way you kickstart a day of hiking, and our breakfast at Wild Bill’s certainly delivered. I can already picture my own look of ambivalence when faced with tomorrow morning’s breakfast protein bar.
The Folly of FKTs
The 100-meter dash is not for the slow-footed. It is the domain of the rocket ships of the human race and the winners are bestowed the title of world’s fastest man or woman. One simple question though: Why?
The Checkerboard
The massive expanse we've been walking through these past three days since Atlantic City is an unusual one. Neither forested wilderness nor arable farmland, but an arid and windswept region that pries apart the Continental Divide from nearly the border of Colorado to the foot of the Wind River Range.
Red Desert
The Red Desert of Wyoming is not a place you easily miss. At better than 9,000 square miles, you'd need only a pair of eyes to see it readily from space. And zooming down from space to ground level, you might have seen two specks ambling slowly across it.
So Long, September
The last day of September. Somewhere along the way, summer slipped into the distance without us hardly noticing. The cold nights of the past few weeks heralded the start of autumn, but with the return of cloudless sunshine and 70-degree weather it feels like the perfect time to be out hiking.
Where Water Goes to Die
One truck. Then another. And another, and another. On and on went the 4am procession, racing past our tent that wasn't 20 feet from the shoulder of the highway we'd followed since leaving Rawlins yesterday. Hunting season had apparently followed us all the way from north of the Wind River Range to here, where midnight had marked the beginning of the local rifle season.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Food. Hot shower. Laundry. Grocery store. An easy hitch, or better yet, no hitch at all. Sounds basic enough, doesn't it? It's a simple recipe for the ideal resupply stop. And yet you'd be surprised by how few stops we make that check even that modest list of boxes.
Wyoming, Wyoming
The first time I saw the grassy hillsides sloping upward into dark green forest, I was 24. Hours earlier on the same cross country drive that moved me to Seattle, the flatland plains of the Midwest had stretched impossibly far into the distance, away from either side of my car as it zoomed down the interstate loaded with every one of my worldly belongings.
Closing the Loop
Cleanliness is a relative concept. At least that's what I tell myself. It's an especially handy rationalization for days like today when I watch each step conjure its own dust cloud on a trail pulverized by a summer’s relentless heat and the traffic of ATVs. I am the real-life incarnation of Pig Pen.
Simplicity
10 feet by 15 feet. Polished concrete floor. Corrugated aluminum walls. Dimly lit only by the harsh fluorescent lighting of the hall outside. Inside, all of our worldly belongings aside from those we carry on our backs sit quietly, slowly collecting a veneer of dust.
Land of Enchantment
If you close your eyes and picture New Mexico, what do you see? I'd always pictured a vast, arid plateau. Maybe Taos ski resort. And ancient remnants of the dwellings of indigenous people.
Trail Ancestry
It's hard to top hiking in the fall. The heat of summer is a thing of the past, replaced by crisp, cool nights and a kaleidoscope of colored foliage. The rustle of leaves a new sound effect to complement the bugling of elk.
Dream Beneath a Desert Sky
I never thought much about the stars. Not until I shared a tent with my Dad in the wilderness. He would gaze idly at the night sky, pointing out constellations, shooting stars, planets, and the Milky Way. His awe of what hung above our heads was infectious.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
A Eugene O’Neill play isn't typically the first place one would go to feel uplifted. There's a depth and darkness to the themes he explores, none more so than his semi-autobiographical masterwork, Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Addiction, despair, depravity, familial dysfunction—it’s all there. And if you were waiting for a Hollywood ending, keep waiting.
Not that Cuba
Dark and frozen. All the attributes anyone would want in a trail morning...sort of. Kissed by overnight frost, the flat spot we managed to find in the dark had predictably pooled and focused the night’s cold. It was a morning that made me even more thankful for the decision to reincorporate coffee into our routine.
Sailors and their Sea
Pavement. Dirt. Sand. Stone. As Cuba shrank into the distance behind us, each surface gave way to the next as the highway leading out of town became a dirt road and finally a trail. It didn't take much to appreciate that in the heat of summer, this would be a veritable oven. Even with a temperature in only the high 70s or low 80s, the intensity of the sun and the dryness of the air conspire to make it feel decidedly warmer.
Two Thousand
After yesterday's downright social atmosphere, it was back to a more familiar one: just us, the trail, and a smattering of cows that aren't quite as adept at holding up their end of a conversation. It was the first morning that either of us could remember starting without a warm layer or two, so warm was the early sun.
The Upside Down Place
If you have any fondness for the ‘80s, the Netflix series Stranger Things and its sinister “Upside Down Place” has probably made your watchlist (and if it hasn't yet, it should). But there's another “Upside Down Place” of a less supernatural sort too—and we've been walking through it all day.
The Last Summit
Not 200 miles from the border of Mexico, the Pacific Crest Trail arrives at the foot of something very unexpected. Rising up from the desert floor as if conjured from the earth and into the sky, Mt. San Jacinto looms impressively above the tiny town of Idyllwild. With an elevation of nearly 11,000 feet and a prominence of over 8,000 feet, it would be hard to miss.
Route 66
All things change. Nothing stays the same. It's as true of this trail as it is for anything else. Long from now, much of the 2000 miles we've walked will be gone, forgotten beneath the soil that has reclaimed it, replaced by newer and better tread. But the scenery—the thing that brings people back year after year—that will remain the same.
The Badlands
I am one with the pavement. In an effort to be zen that's what I tell myself. Lacquered in tar, the rocks of the asphalt seem larger than I'd expect, maybe a half inch in diameter or more. Shoulder-less, we walk the edge and wave at the oncoming traffic that, without exception, moves into the other lane to give us as much room as possible.
Yellow and Blue
Hanging on our dining room is a framed print of what looks like one of the world’s simplest works of art. My colleagues at work have probably even noticed it a time or two in the background of a video call and wondered: “Why that?” Two floating blocks of color, one above the other, it is a reproduction of Mark Rothko’s Yellow and Blue.
Destination: Pie Town
Contrary to popular opinion—including my own—it is sometimes very much indeed about the destination, the journey be damned. When the journey is along yet another hot and dusty road for miles on end, it's not hard to see why the old adage might begin to lose some of its shine.
Appreciation
Coming down the stairs from our room at the Toaster House, I could smell the coffee that I hadn't even heard Jefferson make while we were packing up. We stood in the kitchen enjoying a cup or two while admiring the convenience of it. No fuel to pour, no pot to fill with water, and nothing to pack up afterwards.
On the Trail Again
At 6:15am, the sunrise is still just an idea. One that hasn't been born into reality yet. In the dark, I reach out to light the stove for coffee. Atop is a pot that I've pre-filled with water the night before. Through holes in the windscreen below, the blue flame of the stove glows and dances in the subtle breeze, the whole thing taking on the look of a tiny metallic jack-o-lantern.
Priorities
I wonder about the world. Not the world of nature we've had the luxury of escaping to these past 4 months, the other one. The one hikers semi-jokingly refer to as the “artificial world.” Detachment from the cares and strictures of that world is a feature of thru-hiking, not a bug, but roiled by a pandemic, that detachment has grown exponentially.
A Trail Runs Through It
By the time we'd laid our heads to rest last night, the official CDT was miles away. Turning away from the Black Range, we'd opted instead for an alternate that would take us along the course of the Gila River and today would grant us our first glimpse of it.