The Colorado Trail ~ Day 4

Forest Service Road 560 (Wellington Lake Road) to Long Gulch
Distance: 16.2 miles
Elevation Gain: 2840 ft

Climb Every Mountain. And Climb and Climb and Climb

And we're off again. Over 16 miles to cover, mostly uphill but really; how hard can that be?

Well, bloody hard as it turns out. 6:35am found me trudging up a steep jeep trail with barely a half-pint of coffee in my system. It didn't take too long to use all the calories gained from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and much too soon I was heaving and wheezing once more. I couldn't even blame the pack this time; my gear was stripped to the bone and while the tent and sleeping bag alone were disturbingly heavy, I had no spare clothes and only the barest minimum of food.

But uphill is uphill, whichever way you slice it and I was only averaging around 2 mph, which was going to make for a long day. The trail alternated from thick, dark pine trees to light, summery aspen forests, but the only variance in the gradient was from steep to steeper. The trees blocked any scenery so the view was simply the muddy trail rising in front of my face. For mile after mile after mile.

That's not entirely true; one bright spot came when I almost tripped over a very young fawn lying directly on the path. It's common for the mothers to leave new-borns unattended for hours or even days while they forage for food; however usually they hide them better than this. I had to wonder if the little rebel had done a spot of exploring on his own, then hunkered down when I came along. Either way, he didn't so much as twitch while I left the track and took a wide excursion around him.

So on and on I climbed, with the track only getting steeper. Stopping for a breather was no pleasure either because of the mosskeeters that descended upon me with glee if I so much as slowed my pace. "Mosskeeters can't live at this altitude" my ass. There were times when I had to go around fallen trees as they were just too big to climb over and each delay felt like a slap in the face.

I met two middle-aged guys hiking the other way (downhill, what a concept!) and they cheerfully explained that I had a lot of climbing ahead of me. Mutter, mutter, mutter. At somewhere around 10,000 feet I walked through my first snow of the trail. Only a small slushy patch but considering this is the first day of summer, still intriguing.

Much more alarming was the first clap of thunder, which came at 10:05 am. Usually the summer storm clouds don't roll in until mid-afternoon and this was disturbing considering how far I still had to go. Even more disturbing was just how close the storm was. The next clap almost blew my socks off. Fortunately, it never really came to anything because shortly after, I popped out of the trees and into a wide, open meadow. Not the place to be during a lightning storm.

Good news is, the steep climbing was now over and after an early lunch, I set out on the long, slow grind up the valley. Nothing like the same altitude gain, but still climbing, climbing, climbing.

I consoled myself that at least I was lasting 45 minutes or so between breaks, unlike the 4 or 5 minutes I was managing on Day 2, but even so, the head of that damn valley just never seemed to get any closer and I was a weary little hiker by the time I finally crested the summit a little after 3 pm. 2 miles more to go and downhill all the way, but by now I was so utterly banjoed, I couldn't really appreciate it.

16.2 miles is a long haul when 80% of it is uphill and you were starting at over 7,000 feet in the first place. It feels even longer when you end up clocking an extra mile at the end trying to find somewhere flat enough to pitch a tent and then end up having to walk the mile back again to accept a sort-of-OK site you'd dismissed earlier. And when you know that you'll have to walk that mile for a third time in the morning.

Naturally, the rain which had been threatening since this morning finally got going as I was setting up camp. And the mosquitoes followed me there and drove me indoors by 8pm. And the freeze dried "food" I'd brought for dinner tasted every bit as vile as you'd imagine.

But when I put down my book and snuggled into my sleeping bag I was asleep in moments. And I stayed asleep until morning and you can't complain about that.

Even better, tomorrow's the final day. A mere 14 miles. And a good chunk of that is downhill.

This is going to be a piece of cake.