Day 65: Heading south out of Leadville

Mileage: 35.2 miles (987.3-1022.5)

** I BROKE 1,000 MILES TODAY, WOOHOO! **

I started the morning in Leadville with a cup of coffee and baked good at the coffee shop. The barista there asked if I was going out for a hike today and I told her I was on the CDT. She said she had thought so because of my beard and plastic baggy wallet, but the laptop I was carrying threw her off. Her name was Trish or Fish and she lived at the hiker hostel in town. She had met Karma a week or two earlier and when I told her I had hiked with him, she said, "wait, are you Lt. Dan?" I guess Karma had told her about me. After I got my coffee I asked them to recommend a baked good and ended up with a very delicious blueberry-crumble muffin on the house. I hadn't hiked a mile in ten days so I felt a little guilty about the free muffin, but I was planning to do thirty five miles that day so I figured I'd take whatever I could get.

Kerry, Alex and Margi's new housemate, had offered to give me a ride up to Tennessee Pass and I gladly accepted. The pass is only 8 miles north of town on Highway 24, but that was much more than I wanted to walk with a big day ahead. I got to the trailhead by 8am, which was complete with a 10th Mountain Division memorial.

The 10th Mountain was a division of the army which trained high up in the Rockies to simulate combat in the Alps during WWII. They were some of the bravest and most badass soldiers, training for months in subzero conditions above 12,000 feet, all for the privilege to fight the Italians and Germans in probably the most brutal theater of the war - if the Nazis didn't get you, perhaps frostbite or hypothermia would. Today, the 10th Mountain Division system of huts provide wonderful retreats in the high mountains, especially in the winter where many use them as base for backcountry ski adventures. 

At the trailhead I ran into my first two Colorado Trail (CT) hikers of the trip, a couple from Denver. The CT goes from Durango to Denver almost 470 miles, congruent with the CDT for at least 200 of those. I wished them luck and set out. From Tennessee Pass the trail wound it's way gently up and down for a few miles until it reached the Holy Cross Wilderness. I was amazed how well the trail was maintained and breezed through the morning, feeling energized to get back on the trail. I ran into two more CT hikers, doubling the number I'd seen. These two had enormous looking packs and I wondered if they had food for all the way to Durango inside.

Motoring along some more I saw a guy about my age headed north. He looked pretty ragged so I assumed he was a CDT hiker. We stopped and chatted and it turned out he was from Austria and had been hiking since Mexico like me. He didn't realize I was also a CDT hiker because I was headed south. He'd also hiked through the San Juan's and we bonded over that suffering. We didn't linger long because the bugs were biting, but said we'd hope to meet again down the trail.

About an hour later I saw another fella heading north. This time it was Lion King, a lean,  shorter guy in his fifties. I had last seen him in Chama - he's the one who'd taken a low route West of the San Juan's with his wife and daughter. We exchanged stories of what'd happened since - he did most of the talking and not much of the listening as that's in his nature. We also said our goodbyes. I didn't know at the time, but these two were just the beginning of twelve CDT hikers I'd see that day - more than I'd seen in the first 1,000 miles combined.

None of the CDT hikers I came upon thought I was also a CDT hiker. It was interesting to see how different hikers reacted and responded to what they assume are day hikers. Some almost gave off a feeling of superiority, while others would pretend I didn't exist. It's funny the social order established on the trail, where only those hiking 3,000+ miles are deserving of respect or even acknowledgment of existence. For those that didn't even say "how are you" I also ignored. I was happy to meet the hikers who did stop and swap stories about the trail. By the end of the day it felt like I must have stopped and talked for close to two hours overall, even though it always seemed we both were in a rush.

There was Lion king, the Austrian kid, Dayman and his two friends, the two guys right after them that they wanted to avoid, the friendly big bearded guy, Hedgehog and his friend, and then another foreigner at end of day who asked me how far the trailhead was. It was kind of neat meeting folks because many of them had followed my blog and Facebook posts, especially when it came to the San Juan's. It was cool to see that me and Karma's trip actually helped others along the way and one group even joked that they'd "finally got to meet a legend!" Which is pretty silly.

Pretty much to a tee they all wondered how I ended up back there, why I was walking south, and where Karma was. In order, I explained I'd taken three weeks off trail in the  last month, that it was just logistically easier for me to walk south from Leadville, and Karma was somewhere near Rocky Mountain National Park. A lot of explaining every time you run into someone in the woods - in fact, I felt mentally exhausted by the end of the day meeting so many other hikers.

I needed to do 35 miles so I could meet my friend Jason, from Omaha, in Twin Lakes. Only in hindsight did I realize I shouldn't have planned so ambitiously for my first day back on trail in nearly two weeks. The first twenty or even twenty-five miles were no problem. There were remnant snow patches here and there, especially on the high, north-facing slopes, but at this point the snow was consolidated and easy to walk over. By mile 30, I was exhausted, and wishing I hadn't promised to meet Jason and his wife Kat at the campsite still four miles away. The real problem was me and Jason were going to share my tent and if I didn't make it, he wouldn't have a place to sleep. 

Totally exhausted I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. As I descended I stumbled through beautiful aspen groves, with the orange and brown heads of King Boletes popping through the duff of the forest floor. If I hadn't been so tired, I would have picked a couple as they are some the most delicious wild mushrooms. The Crimson and Colorado Blue columbine dotted the hillside as the sun was setting, but again I was too tired to appreciate them fully.

With a final few ups, when I should have been going down, I came to the Lakeview Campsite. I thought I'd finally made it. But then there was loop after loop after loop and everyone I asked about how to get to the campground host pointed me in a different direction. I contemplated collapsing at the nearest flat spot, but figured it'd be too hard for me to explain where I was to Jason and Kat. When I finally reached the host's campsite, he informed me it was completely full. I told him I'd walked 35 miles that day. He told me I could walk three more to next closest campground, which he couldn't guarantee wasn't full as well. Luckily, Kat and Jason pulled before I stabbed the dude with my hiking poles. Jason got directions from the guy and we drove to the lakeside campground. It was windy, but we found a flag spot to pitch our tent. I had a bite of cheese and tortilla and went to bed. Kids somehow managed to keep me up partying. I wanted to tell them to "f off" but was too tired. Jason must have thought I was a grumpy zombie.