Day 38: Up into the San Juan's

Mileage: 15.3 miles (687.3-702.6)

We regretfully arranged for our ride at 7am, not realizing that wouldn't give us time for a proper breakfast. We'd been indulging the last few days, so the empty stomach felt all that more empty as me and Karma got in the car to head up to Cumbres Pass and back to the CDT. It was sad to leave everyone, but we all had to hike our own hike and do what we had to do. 

As we drove off, it started pouring rain, picking up where it left off last night with the thunderstorms. Conrad, our driver, was the father of the cleaning lady, both of whom were very good people. In fact, Chama was full of good people, from Dan who gave us ride back from the post office with all our boxes, to Chester, the motel owner, who performed karaoke for me in his hotel lobby (digression: me and Chester literally were in the middle of a conversation, when he said, "let me show you something." Next thing I knew he'd whisked the sheet off the karaoke machine and was belting out his favorite country songs ... because "it ain't music if it ain't country!" ... video below)

Conrad lamented the kids in town, many of whom had turned to drugs like meth and the violence involved in making sure you always had your fix. He also talked to us about the Cumbres-Toltec railroad, an old narrow gauge railway that's still running today from Chama. It's tourists now who ride it, instead of passengers or freight from Durango and westward. He told us how one of the trestles (bridges) had been mysteriously blown up and closed the railroad for an entire year. They still don't know who did it but everyone has a theory.

He dropped us off at just above 10,000 ft at the pass and told us to call him if we had any trouble. At this point it was basically a full on blizzard. We tried to give him cash for the ride, but the only thing we could get him to keep was $5 for gas. 

As we got out into the heavy falling snow we both wondered if we'd made a mistake and the weather people were all wrong (like they are 50% of the time anyways). After we got our stuff together we set out in the blizzard again, almost identical conditions to when we'd arrived down at the pass a few days earlier. Except this time we had 70 miles before the next town

It slowly started clearing by around 10am and we couldn't have been happier after getting soaked by the wet snow. We climbed steadily, eventually all the way to 12,100 feet. We could see huge peaks of all around us: near, far, south, west, east, and north. They were all shapes and sizes, from very pointy and craggy to square-shaped and massive.  

The blue sky was beautiful against the white snow. After all the shit we got from the rest of the hikers, we couldn't have been happier to be up here, away from all the talk and speculation. We were doing it. Living. Taking a chance, but one where we could always turn back or go to a road. Of course, the south San Juan Wilderness is one of the wildest and most remote in the lower 48, so if we needed to bail it wouldn't be easy by day two or three. But I was confident in my experience in snow travel, as well as Karma's ability.

The best walking was on top of ridges, where the wind blew strong and scoured the snow off the rocks. This made it so we didn't have to trudge through the snow, but we did have to deal with the high winds.  It was slow going nonetheless, and we only could make about 1.5 mph, a big dip from our 3-3.5 mph average. But, there's nothing you can do. The snow is deep and we had a lot of uphill, so all we could do was take it one step at a time.

We found the first open water above 11,000 ft at Dipping Lakes, where we decided to camp on the snow in the trees. There weren't really any other options though as 11,200 ft would be the lowest elevation we'd see for the next two days. I ate macaroni and cheese for dinner and added ketchup and mayonnaise. Mayo is something I typically find disgusting, but it is my absolute favorite condiment on the trail. It's salty and fatty and delicious. I eat it plain too. Maybe too much info. I'm going to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.