Bailing Out of the West Collegiate

Colorado Trail Day 18 – North Fork Chalk Creek to St Elmo, 7 miles

I had my first big Rockies thunderstorm early this morning. I was woken up around 3:30 am by distant rumbles that at first I thought were airplanes. They were a bit too frequent though and soon enough I started to see flashes of lightning. It wasn’t long before the storm rolled right overhead, dropping buckets of rain.  Thankfully we were camped in the valley bottom and the peaks drew the lightning. The thunder was so loud though and echoed off the rock walls of the mountains.

I made sure everything in my tent was tucked in close or in waterproof bags, and snuggled deeper into my sleeping bag. I counted the seconds between the lightning and thunder and hoped it would move off as quickly as it had come overhead. Thankfully there wasn’t any hail, or much of any wind and it passed by in about thirty minutes.

It brought a lot of rain behind it though. I managed to fall back asleep and when I woke up in the morning it was still raining. I figured Sungod wouldn’t be keen to go anywhere in the rain (I certainly wasn’t!) so I dozed until I heard the rain letting up.

When I got out of my tent I saw that there was some blue sky, but also still a lot of big clouds over the western ridge. It was likely we were in for more rain and I was nervous about hiking on. The trail ahead would take us back up above tree line and over more passes through the day.

I’d been looking at my map earlier in the morning and had realized we were perfectly positioned if we needed to escape rough weather. There was a forest service road that went past our campsite and headed due east down the valley. Within a handful of miles we could be at a much lower elevation and away from the more intense weather of the western slopes.

Sungod and I had a good chat about it. He was particularly torn because he was really wanting to complete the Collegiate West. Ultimately though we decided to bail out. Neither of us wanted to struggle with tough terrain in bad weather. Or get caught in a hail storm while above tree line!

The other hikers staying at the camp all decided to follow our lead and head down valley.

Within a couple hours we were walking into the village of St Elmo, an historic mining town with a permanent population of eight! It was a very random place to end up.

The weather had gotten more mild as we got further east and to lower elevations. By 11 am the sun was coming out!

At this point we had a couple options. We could follow another forest road to reunite with the trail 10 miles south from where we’d camped. We’d still have one more exposed pass to get through but the rest of the trail would be valley floor. We’d camp one more night before heading to Salida, the next town near the trail.

Or we could keep walking east and hitch into town that afternoon.

I wasn’t entirely convinced the weather would be as nice back on the western slopes that afternoon. Sungod and I had also been having a discussion about our favorite town foods and definitely had town on the brain! It ended up being a pretty easy decision to continue east and head out of the mountains.

Luckily we only had to walk another mile or so until a really nice couple picked us up and brought us into the town of Salida where we could enjoy some fresh food and get some chores done.