First week on Colorado Trail: the shakedown, the pemmican bust and the bear
A load of backpackers in the bed of a pickup yelled and waved their hiking poles at me as I walked up the main drag this afternoon. People I’ve met on the trail? Maleck, Jet, Captain Yams or Woolly Booger? Maybe Bojangles or Mercury? Not sure. Maybe it’s just the general “yahoo!” feeling of Colorado Trail energy that has infused this part of the state.
Hikers are everywhere. On the trail, I meet at least a dozen fellow Colorado Trail travelers every day, except for the one day I didn’t meet anyone. Off the trail, they’re walking the streets in Durango and Silverton, Salida and Buena Vista, standing by the highway with their thumbs out, turning their pockets inside out at the grocery stores, slamming down cold beers in the bars and wolfing down steaks and burgers in the restaurants.
So how has it gone, this first week? A first week of backpacking is always a shakedown. I do believe that hikers starting their trip in Denver have a bit of advantage: a slower, lower start, a nice rolling trail for 70 miles before it starts the first real climb up Georgia Pass. Starting from Durango, at 6,512 feet in elevation, you begin climbing immediately and you don’t stop until you get over the fierce, frighteningly beautiful Indian Trail Ridge at 12,338 feet.
The pack is getting organized. I can’t find things in the tent at night. I’m still gaining my trail legs and lungs. But I’m much stronger than last year. Much. I’m not bounding like a bighorn up the trail just yet, but all the high-mileage hikers I meet assure me that in time that will come. Yeah! Until then, I’m a 10-mile-a-day guy. My mornings (I’m on the trail by 7 a.m.) start out fabulous and degenerate by afternoon. And I think some of that is because of nutrition.
Yup. The subject I devoted the most time and planning to has turned out to be the most flawed. I blame pemmican.
The pemmican I had such high hopes for — it was supposed to be breakfast and lunch; I made 24 pounds of the stuff during the winter; it was going to be my go-to energy source, my miracle food — is a bust. The truth is, when all was said and done, I just can’t eat it steady and straight. Pemmican is wonderful when thrown into boiling water and mixed with macaroni in the evening. A calorie bomb. But on its own? Give me peanut butter and cheese and eggs. A hard confession. The other thing about pemmican is that in bear country ... well, pemmican is meat and fat, and hey, bears are all about meat and fat. If you’re a mountain man with a Hawkins rifle, you can guard your pemmican. But me? I had a bear walk through my camp one night and all I had was my umbrella. While it’s true that bears are scared to death of umbrellas, I don’t want to make a habit of testing the limits of the power of the umbrella. So I’m leaving the pemmican behind here in Silverton.
Pemmican isn’t taking all the blame here — I expected to make more distance. For the next section of trail, the 53 miles from Molas Pass to Spring Creek Pass, I had budgeted food for three and a half days. When my former wife, Alisa (who has graciously done my Lake City to Salida resupply), reminded me that it took us eight days to do that stretch back in the 1990s, and that there is a lot of climbing involved, I just laughed it off. Ha, ha, ha. I am nearly two decades older now, but hey, so much stronger! Right. After a week on the trail, I thought better of that shorter estimation, and that’s why I headed into Silverton to buy food.
All the equipment has worked out. I had my doubts about the rain kilt, especially when it was storming so hard as I came up Kennebec Pass that rain was blowing up my cuben-fiber skirt. But, hey, how often does that happen? The umbrella? Priceless. Not only does it shed rain, it acts as a windbreak. I curled up behind it beneath a pine once and slept out a storm.
So it’s been shakedown and shakeit-up and get-in-tune week. Meanwhile, I am surrounded by fantastic scenery every minute of every day. On the rainy, cloudy days, mist blows like smoke across the mountain peaks. On the sunny days the skies are the deepest, purest blue. The flowers are like being inside a kaleidoscope. Despite the blisters (I have two), I love moving through this landscape. I feel happy and alive and grateful. And I’ve met some wonderful people. Everyone I meet is going south, and this far south, they are close to the end of their Colorado Trail trip, and they are glowing and wild eyed and filled with the good energy of the mountains.