Hike for a Hospital

I waited in Pagosa Springs an extra day for my package to arrive at the Post Office and the rest of the crew headed back to trail. I was lucky enough to be hosted by Cameron for the night, a local artist, and he showed me through his extensive mineral collection and we talked about crystals and geology the whole night. The next day I took an early morning soak in the free hot spring in the middle of town commonly known as "the hippie pool". I resupplied for the next 6 days at the gas station to save some time and got a hitch back to Wolf Creek Pass in the afternoon with a colorado hiking guidebook writer.

By the time I got to the pass the west fork wildfire was in full swing and there was a huge plume blowing north toward the part of the trail I would be walking on the next day. I had checked the latest maps of the fire location and was confident I would get past safely. The next day I passed the fire and could see the flames way down the valley to the south when walking across the ridge. 2 days later another CDT hiker Tatu Joe had to race around the same fire as it lapped up against the same ridge i walked over. After the experience of walking into wildfire last year in Washington, I was extremely relieved to have bypassed this one.

The trail for the next 6 days stayed between 11,000 - 13000 ft (3300-3900m) following the Continental Divide directly through the San Juans with continual steep climbs and descents. The elevation initially troubled my legs making them turn to jelly half way up each climb, but I even
acclimatized which made the hiking considerably easier at the end of the stretch. During the 6 days I passed through 2 major afternoon thunderstorms. I stayed off the ridges to let them passed but was still greeted with sideways hail and lightening.

This was my first full stretch hiking solo and I found I hiked a bit slower by myself. I am continually distracted by taking photos and collecting rocks, and sometimes I feel I completely forget about hiking when I find an outcrop with good mineralization. On the positive side - it gave me time to take a couple of great time lapses of the fire, and my collection of a rock per day now has some great agate and open cavity quartz specimens.

I decided to carry extra food and skip the town of Silverton to catch up to the rest of the crew at Lake City. When I reached stony pass I found an old mine and started breaking rocks to find my rock of the day. After half an hour or so I heard a voice above me and saw clutch, Virgo and nicotine who had just been dropped off by wiffer from Silverton. It was great timing and I was stoked to see Virgo again after not having seen him for 500 miles. The 4 of us walked the day and a half to Lake City and west of the the papoose fire which had just started to get big. We later found it grew from 29,000 acres to 40,000 acres on that day.

We all got a hitch in the back of a pickup all the way to town after 10 minutes of waiting. We dropped our bags at the hostel and went straight to the pub for pizza and beer. A great end to a fantastic stretch of trail.