DAY 71: Dog Attack (Arrive Grand Lake/Denver, CO) I wake up early, 5:30, since today I'm trying to reach Grand Lake with enough sunlight left to hitchhike the 100 mi / 160 km to Denver - where I have a chest x-ray scheduled for tomorrow (and where I have a friend who I am hopefully staying
Continental Divide Trail Week 10: Shortcuts to Town
DAY 64: Mount Elbert (Arrive Leadville, CO) When we wake up, the wedding party has yet to arrive. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing. What is a bad thing? All of the frozen condensation on my sleeping bag. I can't wait for all of this to melt while my sleeping bag is stuffed away in my
Continental Divide Trail Week 9: Moist Is Dead?
DAY 57: All Alone The smart thing to do would be to start when the sun comes up (then again, the smart thing to do might have been to never begin the CDT in the first place). Instead, I let the sun wake me up (sunrise is around 6:00), and the leisurely pack up my things before starting to hike
Continental Divide Trail Week 8: Three Is Company
DAY 50: Frozen Shoes I wake up today to a first on the Continental Divide Trail (and a first in my life), frozen shoes. The combination of last night's freezing temperatures and my having hiked through muddy, water-filled trails yesterday afternoon lead to a peculiar predicament this morning.
Continental Divide Trail Week 7: Big Decisions
DAYS 43-45: Zero Days 4, 5, & 6 (Pagosa Springs, CO) Moist and I spend three entire days in Pagosa Springs, Colorado - our longest break from during these first seven weeks of hiking. Highlights of our time here include: Picking up a package from the post office with new underwear and
Continental Divide Trail Week 6: The San Juans
DAY 36: Colorado Appa is the first one out of camp this morning as we make our approach to the New Mexico/Colorado border (I can't imagine why Appa is so eager to get to Colorado). Moist and I set out together up a climb through some snow. The snow isn't deep, but the ground is sufficiently
Continental Divide Trail Week 5: Don’t Die
DAY 29: Cuba, New Mexico A benefit of cowboy camping? (That's sleeping with no shelter, aka just your sleeping bag/pad on the ground, for those of you who haven't been paying attention.) When you can't sleep at night you can just lie on the ground and watch shooting stars (or possibly alien
Continental Divide Trail Week 4: One Month In
DAY 22: On-trail pizza delivery There may only be two of us now that Appa is MIA until we make it to Grants, but that doesn't mean Moist and I get going any earlier in the morning (it's not like we start hiking together anyway - you start hiking when you're packed up and ready to go). The sun
Continental Divide Trail Week 3: We Got A Dog
CDT DAY 15 - Last day in the Gila Today is our last day in the Gila and to celebrate our departure back into the high desert we have a rare morning fire. Technically, we'll still be in the Gila National Forest for a bit, but the campground at Snow Lake marks the end of our time actually