Social Faux Pas and The Collegiate East

Miles 6.4

Camped at mm 145.3

Anji can multi task. She can make coffee, let the air out of her sleeping pad, roll it up, and put on her shoes all at the same time.

I can watch my water boil.

She also has a faster reaction time than I do. I feel like I would come to the same conclusions she comes to, but it would take me an additional two to three seconds to make that decision. It keeps me on my toes to try to think as fast as she does. All the time. About everything.

And she cleans up my Social Faux Pas. Like when I was talking to a thru hiker about dirty hippies when the thru hiker declared herself a dirty hippie and I had to try to separate her dirty hippiness from the actual Dirty Hippies that I was referring to and the thru hiker couldn’t figure out what I was talking about and it got awkward and Anji gracefully changed the subject.

*sigh*

Anyway. Anji is the best.

Today started with sunlight lighting up some mountains in the distance with the most gorgeous, heavenly pink glow.

Anji’s troubled breathing and the edema in her ankle area seem to be mostly resolved today. We don’t know why we aren’t acclimating to the altitude, but we just aren’t. We decided to take the Collegiate East route. This is the original Colorado Trail and still counts as a thru hike. It is just as long but is lower in elevation and stays in the trees.

The Collegiate West is above the treeline and has better views but more risk of lightning. If we had to run from a storm, we are literally incapable of doing so. My feet are so bad, and our breathing is bad enough that we would not be able to run for safety.

So Collegiate East it is. And we know nothing about the terrain, the area.

Nothing.

But it’s the right thing to do.

Anyway, the path today was smooth and gentle for the most part. There were some steep uphills, but that led to an old, abandoned railroad bed that we walked on for miles before we reached a road where we hitched into Leadville.

Though yesterday was one of the best “feet days” I’ve had on trail, today was one of the worst.

But we got to rest my feet a lot in town even though we were incredibly busy. Just like every town day. No actual down time.

We went to the post office and got our box of food. We exploded our packs all over the courthouse lawn and identified some rarely used items that could be mailed home and did just that. We ate breakfast and charged electronics. We went to Melanzana, and I actually bought a Melly beanie! I was so excited about my little status symbol. I also put in for their raffle, and Anji took a photo of me outside the store.

It’s freaking cold! Anji reported when she got out of the shower at the laundromat. When I went in for my turn, I held my breath, but the water was hot and delicious, and we didn’t have any shampoo, but we did have Dr. Bronner’s, so we made do. And we didn’t have any laundry detergent, so we just threw everything in under a hot water wash, and it seemed a lot less smelly, so that seemed acceptable.

I ate some food and then felt like I was going to pass out from hunger, so I ran back to the store.

Give me five pieces of meat and five pieces of cheese, I told the deli guy.

What kind? He asked.

I don’t care. I said.

We have a lot of different kinds, he said.

Just give them to me. I said and squatted down, almost sitting on the floor, everything going black with a buzzing sound in my ears.

Pretty quick, he had some meat and cheese for me.

Ma’am? Ma’am? Here you go! He said.

I stood up and got the hell out there. I put my head down on the picnic table outside and stuffed cheese and meat into my mouth until about ten minutes later, when I could lift my head up without feeling terrible.

I texted Anji. I’m ready to go whenever, I said.

I went back to the laundromat and collected her and my stuff.

We hitched a ride with Gracie and Michael, who were on their way to Vail, and they dropped us off right at Tennessee Pass, where we immediately started walking the wrong way.

We identified the error within about 59.6 feet, though, and got back on track. Back to the woods where we belonged.

On those soft, rolling paths we now call home.

The Frost and The Snakeskin

Miles 14.1

Camped at mm 138.9

The first dusting of snow on the tippy tippy top of the pass was yesterday. Today, August 13th, The Frost had dropped to the grass under our feet. Spring went straight to autumn. The tips of some fancy leaves have turned red now, and thistles have lost their royal purple robes.

I wore my long johns all day.

The sun stretched long fingers across the valley to gently touch each needle on the evergreen trees, and the trees sighed as they warmed up. Fat old fatty fat fat marmots saying “me! me! me!” and me saying, “yeah, you! you! you!” and my shadow shedding like a Snakeskin everywhere I went. Getting caught on bushes and grasses and scaring the grasshoppers.

We passed by a place called Janet’s Cabin, which turned out to be pretty swank, for a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and the flowers that missed the frost blink blink blinked around, waiting for the sun to get around to them too.

Eventually at the top of the first pass, at 12,044 feet, we were able to see a new moutain range all together and we got all excited. We wandered into a new valley, the ground all smooth dirt on a path that was more like a trench from years of feet and mountain bike tires coming through. Grasses on either side for miles.

We climbed some more, winding around and around, and ending up at the top of Elk Ridge at 12,280 feet. It was windy and cold up there. I put on my jacket. We took some gorgeous photos. Views here and there and everywhere. We couldn’t stop looking. It was hard to walk. I wanted to look at the views, not my feet.

It rained on us a little as we wound down the other side. Dowwwwn past the evergreens playing peekaboo through the aspens. Dowwwwn past the aspens themselves. Dowwwwn through the “Danger Do Not Touch Anything – Unexploded Ordinance Area” Area. Dowwwwn past the bunkers and back uuuuppppp to eventually land us at our campsite.

Where we collapsed.

Where we were so tired that cooking dinner felt like a chore. So tired that finding a place to put the bear bag seemed impossible. That chewing dinner was too difficult a task.

When wil this get easier?

I fell into a troubled slumber.

My Little Baby, and Guitar Strings

Last time I saw someone with plantar fasciitis this bad, I had them leave with a cast on one leg and a walking cast on the other, the Orthopedic Clinic told me at the time.

So if I were not going to hike the Colorado Trail, you’d cast me?

Yes, she said. That would be my recommendation. Chances of you rupturing at least one fascia while you’re out there on trail are 50/50. Just be mindful of your exit points in case you need to evacuate.

But they knew I was going to hike the Colorado Trail. And they knew there wasn’t any room for negotiation. So they gave me cortisone shots and asked me to stay in bed for a week and do a bunch of stretching exercises.

I started walking again 3 days before I left for Denver.

And my feet are in hellish pain. I brought a band which I use to stretch out my legs while on breaks and a golf ball that I use to roll out my feet. I call it My Little Baby. They feel like there are Guitar Strings strung too tight on the underside of my feet. There is a thick band of swelling so large, it casts its own shadow when I turn my foot sideways in the sun.

Sometimes, it takes me an embarrassing amount of time to stand up. I wobble around on these old feet of mine, trying to muster enough mental toughness to keep putting weight on them instead of collapsing into a puddle of tears. Because what good would that do me?

The pain takes my breath away. The pain oozes deep into my bones and makes them ache in a powerful way that I can only describe as exquisite. And nothing really makes them better. I take my ibuprofen and my tylenol. I’m taking a medrol steroid pack. And every day, I get better at mentally compartmentalizing the pain until it’s just an expected part of walking. When you walk, you will feel this amount of agony.

That’s what walking is. Agony. So, cope.

Strawberry Whey, and I’m Okay.

Miles 5.5

Camped at mm 124.8 … 11,270 feet

I rolled over. It was 6:40 am. Shit.

No, not “Shit”. We’re having a more relaxed morning, and then we’re going to trail, Anji said.

Okay, fine, I said, and got us some coffee.

We blogged and posted and read stuff out loud. We talked to our people and ate yogurt and pineapple, and whatever else seemed like a reasonable morning snack, and then we hugged Zach at the hostel goodbye. He softly smiled and awkwardly hugged us back.

We climbed into our Uber, and we were gone. Zip. Just like that.

Watercolors and Rushmore veered off to go shopping, and we climbed up the mountain by ourselves. It wasn’t too long before hunger took over, and we found ourselves cooking next to a creek that was yammering on about something, under a tree that refused to hide me from the rain.

Oatmeal, pecans, and Strawberry Whey protein powder steamed up from my newly acquired cup I got out of the hiker box at the hostel. I felt happy.

We met some folks along the way today. Walkin’ through the trees. Walkin’ along the streams. Walkin’ under the skies that never would fully commit to the procedure of rain; they’d just drizzle and generally make things miserable.

We set up camp early to blog and smell the earth and hang out with our new friend Alisia, another hiker, and our acquired friend Jenna, a trail worker whose camp we crashed.

The day was short, but the miles were long. We’re camped above 11k feet, and I’m okay.

The Goat and the Death Pool

We started out by sleeping in. So we didn’t have to take the bus to Copper Mountain, which would’ve taken 2 hours, we agreed to split an uber with Rushmore and Watercolors.

Except all the uber drivers slept in too and we couldn’t get a ride, so eventually we rode the bus to 1st Bank and then walked under the freeway and started hitching. We got a hitch, surprisingly quickly, by a nice woman named Sonya who just couldn’t figure out why four women were hitching together with such a strange assortment of gear.

We were slackpacking. Leaving most of our stuff at the hostel, we took only the essentials for the day and set out NOBO to make the miles from Copper Mountain northbound backwards to Breckenridge.

We had a nice visit with her, and she dropped us off at Copper Mountain gondola where we immediately started hiking the wrong way. We were used to hiking SOBO (southbound), so our maps were all turned around and upside down and anyway Anji sorted it all out and we were finally on our way.

We hiked a couple of miles and around a construction site and dashed across a highway and finally back up into the hills where we belonged. And then the hills became mountains. Then the mountains became places where trees refused to go.

And still we climbed. Straight up sometimes, roundabout up some other times. But up and up all the time. Little marmots saying “MEEEP” a lot. Me taking pictures of their little butts as they wobbled away while I say “MEEP” to them a lot and they don’t care because everyone says that to them.

We saw the views of Copper Mountain and the jagged mountains beyond, ripping open the sky, and the freeway we started from way way down below with the little tiny ant cars cruising all around looking all organized.

We reached the top. The tippy tippy top. 12,507 feet. And I could still breathe! Joy of joys! We rejoiced by taking a few selfies with the horsetail rain clouds behind us, peeing behind a rock, doing a quick screenshot of our elevation, and getting the hell out of there before the storm started.

The trail down was slip slip slippery, and it laughed at us a lot. It was built for mountain bikers, not our shoes. It laughed and we slipped and it threw rocks under our feet and laughed as we tripped. The trail narrowed until it pinched our shoes and the trail thought that was really funny and our frustration grew with the pain of every step.

And then there he was.

A mountain goat, I pointed.

He walked down the trail toward us. We walked down the trail towards him. He wouldn’t move…so we did. We went to the low side of the steep hill and made ourselves small. He walked right by us. Slowly, and with purpose, this magical being gave me strength and hope. It was a sign just for us, the goat lovers of this world, that everything will be okay.

I held my breath, what little I had, wishing the moment would never end.

But end it did, and we wandered around in awe of the world and the power of the universe and the gorgeous-ness of Mother Nature and wondered how we were so fortunate to have that experience.

We saw other people, but no one else saw the old goat. He was just for us.

And as the trail laughed and slipped us and tripped us until well after dark, we wouldn’t be daunted. We were overwhelmed with gratitude.

We got to the road well after dark. The hostel was calling us to make sure we were okay since we hadn’t shown up. Watercolors and Rushmore sent us a message on Facebook to see if we were okay, and the bus system said it would get us home at midnight.

We called an uber.

And we were so tired I forgot to take my steroids, and my feet were so swollen they felt like chunks of wood. And the owner of the hostel was all worried and said they’d started a Death Pool on us.

And I was filled with exhaustion.

And Gratitude.

The Forbidden Item and The Grocery Store

Miles 0

Camped at hostel in Dillon, CO

I kept waking up thinking I’d never sleep again, except I’d fall asleep again almost immediately. 11pm, 1:30, 2:15, 4am, 5:12, 6:45. Finally, I made some coffee and sat in the living room in the morning sun and played around on my phone until Anji got up.

We blogged for an extrodinarly long time, and Pterodactyl Man told us all about how last night he learned how to spell pterodactyl, and then we decided to try to go grocery shopping. The bus was too much of a hassle, so we walked there, which turned out to only take about 15 minutes, but by bus takes half an hour and 10 minutes of walking.

I was feeling really good. The meds were working, but Anji had too much coffee and had the jitters. By the time we got to the store, we were so hungry we just bought food and went outside to eat. I bought a Poke Sushi Bowl with gluten-free soy sauce, coconut yogurt, a giant container of fresh pineapple, and a chocolate frappuccino The perfect hiker breakfast.

I couldn’t finish it all, and the receipt blew away into Parking Lot Never Never Land, and then we knew we had to go back into the store. We stashed the remainder of the food in my backpack and then Anji was afraid they’d think I’d stolen the food since I had no receipt anymore, so she stuffed the packs into the underneath part of the cart and we headed back inside.

We wandered around the Grocery Store, eyes big and frustrated. People restocking every aisle. Impossible to move around them. Them not giving one and a half shits that they were in the way. Smiling and saying Good Morning as though it were like that every day. And maybe it was. Seventy-five million people in this huge grocery store. On a Thursday. Seventy-five million people with nothing to do but grocery shop. On a Thursday. And everyone was in everyone’s way. And there were every kind and flavor and brand of every item in the store.

We tried to buy bars to eat on trail, and there were literally fifty different kinds to choose from. And twelve people crammed in there, shopping for them. And one stocker. It was so overwhelming. All kinds and colors. And we are gluten-free, so we had to read ingredients on everything we bought. And we felt disorganized. And we needed coffee for trail. And there were twenty kinds. And we needed beef jerky. 23 flavors and brands, and most of them had soy sauce, which is not gluten-free and not labeled.

It was taking forever.

And the pharmacy hadn’t received my other prescription yet. Finally, they received it and told me it would take 15 minutes to fill it.

We went back to shopping and came back again 15 minutes later. It will be 15 minutes they said.

Finally I sat down. And I was so thirsty but my water was in my pack. Stuffed away under the cart in front of me. The Forbidden Item.

I’m sitting right here. I said. Please let me know when it’s ready. I said.

You’ll have to keep checking back. They said.

I’m the only one here. Can you please tell me when it’s filled? I was so thirsty. I glanced at my backpack.

You’ll have to keep checking back in, ma’am.

I said down for a while. After about 20 minutes, I went up to check.

Yes, ma’am. She smiled and dug it out from the bottom of a bunch of filled prescriptions. It’s ready.

I felt like I was going to scream.

In the meantime, Anji had been trying to get a Kroger card so we could get discounts. She’d been on the phone with their customer service for 20 minutes trying to activate the customer card. Finally activated, we weren’t allowed to use any coupons for a week after activation.

Our heads were spinning by the time we left. Anxiety-ridden, we went outside and barely stuffed everything into our packs before we managed to catch the bus back to the hostel. Because overall, it saved us 5 minutes of walking…and I had my water.

Eventually, our friends from the beginning of the trip, Watercolor and Rushmore, came to spend the night at the hostel too. Watercolor immediately set to work painting a wall of the stoner house with a fancy design of her own making, and we cooked bacon and eggs, with veggies, of course, for everyone.

We blogged, and we planned for the slackpack tomorrow.

And I took some steroids for my feet and meds for my acute mountain sickness and wondered how tomorrow will go, well above 12,000 feet.

The Chicken and The Triceratops

Miles 0

Camped at hostel in Dillon, CO

I woke up at 3am and knew that was it for me. I felt pretty sick and knew there was no more sleeping. I went out to the living room to mess around on Facebook

Around 4am, John carried his stuff into the living room and started chatting with me about this and that and nothing and everything and eventually gave me the phone number for his uber driver who will drive for cash under the table.

We went to urgent care and got some meds to help me with the altitude, and then spent the next 2+ hours trying to get to Breckenridge via the free bus system. At some point, we had to transfer from one bus to another and there was a half hour wait…and there was a Whole Foods. And we were hungry. So we ended up buying a whole, hot chicken, some broccolini, some bitchin’ sauce, some blue tortilla chips, and some carrots. We were each quite busy gnawing away at a chicken leg, like a couple of heathens, when it was apparent that it was time to get on the bus. We wiped our mouths and clambored on the bus, and Anji stuck the whole chicken carefully into the outside of her pack so it wouldn’t spill chicken juice everywhere. You know the kind. The chicken juice.

We got off the bus at the post office but they only had one package out of two and Anji was still trying not to spill the chicken juice anywhere and the post office guy couldn’t figure out why I was taking photos of Anji in the post office with a rotisserie chicken, and anyway I ended up taking pictures of Anji AND the post office guy AND the chicken who was missing both legs.

So we went down the street and set ourselves up in front of an apartment complex on the lawn and ate a bunch of our food until a dog on a leash wandered by and was far too interested in those chicken bones and besides, our fingers were pretty greasy at that point. So we went down to Starbucks and downed a giant coffee and spent some quality time coordinating with other hikers, trying to meet up for dinner and consequently missing them. They were on one bus coming to us and we were on another bus going to them and the package was sent to another town all together and everything was mixed up and I was so tired I almost cried. I literally couldn’t do a resupply at the store, so Anji took me back to the hostel where I passed out for a few hours.

I got up to get some water and some guy in the kitchen started showing me pictures of rocks he found, believing them to be fossils of parts of pterodactyls and tyranosaurus rexs, triceratops, and saber tooth tigers. Fully engulfed in his delusions, and so eager to share his findings, and so reeking of stale cigarettes, I couldn’t help but think that if someone had to have a delusion, it would be best to have one so fun and rewarding! Just today, he’d dug up a 200-pound rock and brought it home on his skateboard because it was the chest cavity of another pterodactyl.

I was finally rescued by the owner of the hostel, who told the guy he was desperately needed in the garage, putting some bolts in a project. The guy got really excited about it and left, leaving me to get back to my comfy bed and the slumber I desperately needed in order to get well.

The Aguish of Adventure

Let’s talk a little about adventure. The true nature of it.

Mostly what you read is the good parts. The parts that are the most interesting to write about. To read about. To hear about.

You don’t really want the grit.

It’s too whiny or complainy or pouty. But it’s all there. The blood and the swelling and the pain and the mental anguish. And that’s all part of it too. It’s wrapped up in the beauty of the adventure. It’s what makes it raw and wonderful. It’s what makes me appreciate clean water. It’s what makes me cherish clean underwear, or feet that work.

But it’s hard to write about the ugly stuff. It’s hard to admit that my feet were so swollen the other day that I walked too slow uphill. That I was in unbearable pain and though I was doing my best, I walked past ant colonies that were 6′ x 6′ x 1′ and they were the biggest ant colonies I’d ever seen in my life and the ants started crawling up my legs and biting me. And I couldn’t walk any faster. And I could only reach them to shoo them away when they reached the bottom of my shorts because the hill was so steep and I needed my hands for my trekking poles to help me with the pressure on my feet. It sounds like failure.

It’s hard to write that it’s not just high altitude sickness. It’s Acute Mountain Sickness. It’s facial edema which means that my face swells up until I feel like I can’t see very well. It causes some nausea. It’s waking up feeling like I can’t breathe and being scared. It’s a wet cough that I know can’t be good that turns to a dry cough that I hope is better. It’s terrible headaches and forgetting to look at the time because time doesn’t exist out here and then suddenly the tylenol and the decongestant wears off and I feel horribly ill all over again. And it’s ugly.

It’s excrutiating pain in my right foot with every single step. And every time I pick up my foot, I have to convince myself it’s okay to put it down again. All day. But then one day, that blinding pain moves to my left foot instead and that’s startling and infuriating because I only know how to mentally deal with the pain being in my right foot and what do I do with this new agony? But then we take that as a good sign because it means my right foot is not as completely fucked as we thought. But we have to move slower because I can’t wrap my head around this new pain, so we have to stop a lot to regroup and handle my struggle.

It’s walking just far enough behind Anji so that she knows I’m there, but if I whimper accidentally, she can’t hear me to worry unneccessarily, but if I call out, she can hear me just fine.

It’s gauging to whom, at home, I can tell the truth. Who can handle it? Who will cry and tell me to come home versus who will handle the situation and encourage me in a meaningful way to continue? Who can help me decide the right course of action? Who knows me well enough to know when my will and my mental fortitude is overcoming sensibilities and safety? Who can I trust to tell ME the truth? Where is the correct back and forth?

And the constant worry that if my body fails me, what does that mean? If the earth is constantly trying to kill me, how can I continue to adventure?

And if I can’t adventure, who am I?

The Worthless Water Carry and The Scoopy Pond Creek

Miles 15.4

Camped at hostel in Dillon, CO

Dark forests and grassy hillsides and windy, roundabout trails led us into valleys and out again.

The mountains watched us go. All unimpressed with our pride and progress.

We had 10 miles to go without water. We filled up with four liters of water and headed up the pass. Just to find water one mile later. Worthless Water Carry.

But that’s okay. It’s better that having no water at all. We hit the ridge at 11,215 feet and hung out around that altitude for a while, passing a ski resort, and eventually heading back down again.

Five stitches later, Stasha is back on trail after falling and busting her knee open. She, like so many of us, know that this trail ain’t gonna hike itself. So here she is, back at it. We’re happy for her. I even got teary when I saw her. Out here. Doing it.

Into the valley we go, ho-ho. And there we were at the bottom. At the 10 mile mark. Where there was water to carry to camp. Except the water was the tiniest trickle. And Anji had to scoop it out of a puddle with her cup and put it in her Katadyn Filter. And then she loaned me her cup to do the same. Because my cup still had leftover Mashed Potato Residue from last night’s dinner.

So I filled up my filter, and we looked in the Far Out app and found out that a bear ravaged campers in this area last night. So we decided to hike all the way to Breckenridge. We called around and found a hostel that was only $29 a night so we booked that, cooked dinner at the Scoopy Pond Creek, and headed into the waning light of day.

We did eventually make it to the highway. And it turned out that the hostel was quite a ways away from where the trail met up with the road. So we stuck out our thumbs in the light of a street light and waited, getting chilly with our hoods up and our gloves on in the dark.

We did get picked up, and the mountain biker took us all the way to our hostel, which is a total stoner pad. Homemade stoner art covering the walls. Little hand drawn signs saying “Hell Yeah!” on the fridge, and wall hangings of what Alice in Wonderland would look like if you were on acid. A very tidy area of rolling papers and marijuana pipes in the corner.

But it was clean-ish, except for the carpet, and there was a girls’ room with nice bunk beds and clean linens and comfy beds, and Anji and I were the only girls staying there so we had the place to ourselves. We were exhausted, and after a tour of the place, we passed out quite comfortable and safe.

Bonus Miles and 11,880

Miles 16.4

Camped at mm 88.3

We slept in until 4:30. Then we were hiking by 6:04. Out power banks had charged to 100% overnight, and it was a complete success. Anji cut the backs of her fancy Merrell water shoes off with her pockt knife and we laughed a lot and I took pictures. We skipped our way along. Well, okay, we huffed and puffed our way along…

After we’d been on trail for a while, we recognized a tent. Wait just a minute…we were going through the campground. Then we saw our site that we’d stayed in last night. Grrr. We’d gone all the way around to the proper trail head, which took us in a giant loop straight back to the campground! Oh well. Bonus Miles.

We immediately climbed our way into a cloud. Its tendrils swirling around us and making the morning both eerie and stunning.

When the sun burned off the clouds, we were left in an aspen forest, and there was Anji. Framed by aspen, with a beautiful vista just beyond. I took a photo.

We climbed and climbed all day and finally reached the top at 11,880 feet where we planned on camping.

It was cold and windy and I was sucking air, and besides, we both still had some juice left in the tank, so we decided to move to a lower elevation. We continued another 4.6 miles to where we are now. All downhill. Camped at a lovely stream. With all the other hikers.

We set up our tents and collapsed into them. Barely suffering through our nightly chores. But making it home to our home away from home.