CDT Part 9: Breckenridge to Grand Lake – Windy on Divide Ridges
Miles This Section: 127.8
Total Miles Hiked: 1,149.8
June 30-July 4, 2024
In Breckenridge, I say farewell to the Colorado Deli Blaze (Part 1 and Part 2) where towns feel like a daily distraction. The prospect of full days of hiking and sleeping on the trail for longer stretches was exciting – as long as eyes were kept from obsessing over the elevation profile ahead.
The high parks and ranges of North-Central Colorado stays with me the most out of the Centennial State. Our dreams of strongwilled, distraction-free hiking were – in reality – met with long days following the Continental Divide with only hints of a foot trail above 12,000 feet in elevation. Deafening, endless wind from morning to evening made us stagger on our feet, ripping rain jackets, and break time almost impossible to catch up on calories. Our ability to traverse ridgelines dictated mileage to safely setup camp below treeline, daily planning set around reasonable mileage and thunderstorms. And then… there were the rains, clouds, and chilling to the bone threats of hypothermia.
It’s wild to say that in this section with so much to give, I dreaded hiking every day yet absolutely fell in love with Northern Colorado’s scenery and small-town feel.
“Sometimes you’ve just gotta meet your body where it’s at.”
Says our friend Judd at a campsite in the Cochetopa Hills of Southern Colorado. He’s already completed the CDT once northbound. This year, he’s carrying a self-made ultralight banjo and taking new alternates, hiking a different trail than he completed years ago.
I hold on to sometimes you’ve gotta meet your body where it’s at as it becomes a daily mantra. In high wind, questionable weather, and long periods of solitude going north, it’s a reminder to step away from a competitive mindset and try my best to ease into the adventure’s beautiful ebbs and flows. I might not be as experienced as some of the other hikers. But… I’m out here. I’m doing the thing and learning along the way. An East Coast girl out west has to start somewhere. I just chose to start everything all at once.
Mountain Passes vs. Ridges vs. Saddles
Before we start, a detour to explain some mountain terms and what they mean for human-powered travel:
- Mountain Pass: The easiest route to pass through a mountain range or ridge. This usually means the route ahead goes up and over the crest of a steep landform. Unless it’s a roadway pass, where the trail will likely head down (to a road low point) and then back up.
- Mountain Ridge: A single continuous crest of elevated peaks with many bumps to go over or around.
- Mountain Saddle: The lowest point connecting two peaks. If navigable, a saddle can be used as a pass. Hikers go up to a saddle or down to a saddle. It’s a point along a ridge that’s usually flatter, good for taking a break, and kinda looks like a horse’s saddle on a map.
These terms are thrown around by people familiar with mountains and mountaineering like candy at a parade. It wasn’t until I was in the mountains, boots on the ground looking at the topo map on my phone that I started to recognize these terms in formation. And not until now (thanks to Wikipedia) that I learned to explain the differences other than Oy, that was one heck of a pass!
Fun Tip: go bathroom (pee included!) before a climb, because it’s silly to be carrying that extra weight uphill.
To Grand Lake We Go!
Georgia Pass

This gap in the fence past the Georgia Pass juction is where the CDT’s Embrace the Brutality starts back again.
Near Georgia Pass, 20 miles northbound from Breckenridge/Colorado State Highway 9, the CDT splits off from the Colorado Trail. This junction is where CDT continues north towards Wyoming and the Colorado Trail turns east to Denver.
It’s here that CDT hikers breathe a sigh of relief. As a northbounder, the upcoming miles will have significantly less foot and bike traffic to maneuver around. I’m ready for it. It’s the opposite feeling for southbounders who know for the next several hundred miles there will be a smooth, maintained, marked pathway (the Colorado Trail) to follow. Lucky them!
Glacier Ridge
Almost immediately we are reminded of the CDT’s slogan Embrace the Brutality. Comments left by prior hikers in the FarOut Guides navigation app warn us, and still, I am not prepared for the wild jolt. We are back on the CDT.
After a short gravel road walk, a CDT blaze appears next to a small gap in the wooden fence lining the road. Stepping through the opening, a wide braided depression of exposed rocks heads left and upwards from the saddle. It’s the start of a 13-mile series of peaks above 12,000 feet. Landmarks include Glacier Peak, Whale Peak, Handcart Peak, Webster Pass, Red Cone, Landslide Peak, Geneva Mountain, Sullivan Mountain, and Santa Fe Peak. Unnamed on my maps, I’ve dubbed this as Glacier Ridge.
This ridge will kill me. I text my boyfriend after only a few miles. Tom, who thru-hiked the CDT in 2021, replies You’ll be fine. haha. Super unhelpful.
When I think of my CDT thru-hike, images from this day are first to mind.
On this day, I have 24 miles to walk before the agreed-upon tent site where Bus Driver and I will be meeting back up with Double Dip. The wind is mild and the sky stays blue through the morning. Things are going relatively well until dark thunder clouds roll in as I sit down for lunchtime pepperoni after Webster Pass. Oookay, cutting that break short I grumble and pack up to outrun the picturesque clouds grumbling back. They are not sparking light, just rumbling, an agreement formed between me and the sky as the meet your body where it’s at pace quickens to get the heck outta here!
Several hours later I’ll meet back with Bus Driver who’s waiting for me in the rain below treeline – we’ve both gotten off the ridge before the evening downpour. Separate tales of the day are shared walking the road to Peru Creek Valley: the spotting of ATV and Jeep drivers at Red Cone and the surprise knife edge section where the narrow rock ridgeway formed spicy sharp drop-offs on either side of the path.
Peru Creek Road is lined with car camping spots and old mining camp ruins with white mineralization on the boulders of Peru Creek evidence of a heavy mining past. Where the trail veers off from the road, Double Dip is waiting for us at possibly the shittiest, slopeiest tentsite of the entire CDT. It’s the only spot available before the next day’s ascent to Grays Peak. At least it’s under trees.
Glacier Ridge was the distinct start of a new section. Jokes aside at the challenges, I felt (and still feel) so lucky to be exploring the divide wilderness, each day so different from the next.

There were many comments in FarOut saying to not drink the water from Peru Creek, a river polluted with sulfuric acid and heavy metals due to historic mining operations.
The Grays Peak Attempt
I choose to follow the main CDT redline off of ‘Glacier Ridge’ instead of taking the Argentine Spine. On the spine daredevils can follow the Continental Divide for another six miles of unofficial tread from Santa Fe Peak to Argentine Pass (the southern access point for Mount Edwards and Grays Peak). It’s a spicy, windy, beautiful, rocky traverse that stays above 12,300 feet in elevation with no water or point of bailout. For me, it’s the right call in bad weather and plans to meet friends in the valley, an acceptance that I don’t thrive at high elevations.
Grays Peak (14,254 feet) is our last opportunity to bag a 14,000-footer on the CDT. It’s the only 14er directly on the trail. It’s the only peak that really matters.
Double Dip has been scanning the FarOut comments and weather forecast for days planning for the ascent. The forecast doesn’t look promising with late morning rain expected and it’s unclear if snow remains at elevation. However, the summit does look plausible especially if we work together to cross the narrow knife’s edge between Mount Edwards and Grays Peak before weather moves in.
The knife edge from Edwards to Grays is said to be the sketchiest mile of the CDT. Every comment in FarOut says to NOT do the knife edge in bad weather.
The day starts surprisingly great. As dawn breaks at 5am, our group of three joined by a fourth thru-hiker are packed up and hiking 1,750 feet in elevation from Peru Creek to Argentine Pass. We don’t originally plan to ban together but soon finding hiking in groups is best for this morning.
The ascent is more gradual than expected, and as someone who hasn’t acclimated well to the highlands, I’m feeling quite confident at the climb and being ahead of schedule, even as light rain starts around halfway up.
At Argentine Pass (13,205 feet) we have a group meeting to pull on more layers. It’s windy, cold and rainy in the low 40s, and the mountains ahead are solidly clouded in. Almost another mile along the rocky ridgeline is completed, close to summiting Mount Edwards (13,817 feet), before the group turns around to run back to Argentine Pass.
At the decision point of bailing from Grays, the four of us are shaking with hands and legs numb under layers, all of us being generally unprepared run-of-the-mill thru-hikers. I’m willing to bet at this point in the hike I have about 3 percent body fat and not an ounce of that is holding onto heat.
It’s decided that walking another two miles and 1,000 feet up in elevation into a cloud to summit Grays Peak with full packs in foul weather is dumb. Pretty dang dumb.
So we bail off the hike to Grays Peak due to weather. The call of warmth, walls, and hot drinks is too strong once a non-CDT route to a nearby mountain town is scouted on our navigation apps. Off the northern slope of Argentine Pass we continue for eight miles northeast on various tracks, the Forest Service roadbed in some places a river to our knees from heavy rain. Double Dips parents, still visiting the area, rendezvous with us in Georgetown, Colorado, for a warm, much-needed brunch and a ride back to the trail as the rain clears.
The memory that stays with me is not the Grays attempt itself. It’s the ridiculous feeling of strength I get walking the endearing streets of a foreign mountain town in a drenched and tattered green rain jacket and purple wind pants after mailing muddy microspikes from the post office. One less pound of carried pack weight achieved. The last of the snow gear sent home.
The Sad Broken Footpath
Bailing to Georgetown meant the continuous footpath a couple of us had been maintaining – myself included – was now broken. There were two options: go back to Peru Creek (last night’s campsite) or continue forward from the northern Grays Peak trailhead where we were dropped off by Double Dip’s parents. We achieved a similar total mileage for the day but not the miles that counted.
At the trailhead, we contemplate ways to tag the summit. Our footpath will be logistically close to impossible to reconnect, but at least we would have Grays Peak bragging rights.
Physically, we are capable of day-hiking this 14er “the tourist way” even with full packs. But our bodies shudder from the trauma of hypothermic symptoms only hours before, as we look up at the mountain shrouded in clouds. Mentally… I’d rather do literally anything else. Brrrrr. There are a few frustrated tears accepting the imperfection of the CDT and the self-imposed goals we place on hiking from Mexico to Canada. A decision made, we say there’s a chance we could come back once the weather clears. The walk continues northbound, now on a nice paved bike path, as the sunny to rainy to sunny weather feels just as confused as we are.
Vasquez Peak Wilderness
From the Lower Grays Peak Trailhead we cross under I-70 to Herman Gulch of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, once again finding a campsite feet below treeline before an early morning ridgewalk.
We’re in the The Vasquez Peak Wilderness until Berthoud Pass at Highway 40 West. This morning’s ten-mile ridge is encapsulated in clouds with about 20 feet of visibility. A few miles in I’m lucky to run into another hiker, BOSA, who’s tagged back into the main CDT after following the lower elevation Silverthorne Alt. His presence, the feeling of walking with another human being, is a saving grace to a morning of feeling cold to the bone and crossing snowfields in a concerning mental fog. Just minutes before I’d been scanning the map for bailout points. Now, all I have to do is follow the feet of BOSA ahead.

The clouds, although cold, do shape the landscape into something new. The only thing to focus on the rocky brown footpath ahead. Everything else is opaque white. The drop to the left? White. The snowfield right? A white pocket scattered with debris blends into foggy white above and below. The uphills ahead? Don’t know her, can’t see her.
The cloud cover breaks in the valley of Vasquez Peak as we leave the continental divide for a brief moment before tagging the summit of Stanley Mountain. In daylight, the divide of Vasquez Peak Wilderness is quite lovely, albeit windy and cold. I’m certainly thankful for not bailing earlier.

After an eerie morning of walking in cloud cover, Vasquez Peak Wilderness nearing Berthoud Pass was quite scenic.
Berthoud Pass and James Peak Wilderness
At Berthoud Pass/Highway 40 West we are treated to some trail magic of salads, Gatorade, and candy by a lovely trail angel in contact with BOSA. Grace – unaware that she’d have additional guests – somehow splits two salads into six to feed a small group of hikers in the Berthoud Pass Warming Hut. Grace’s smiling face and blue pull-behind teardrop trailer will appear again later in East Glacier, Montana.
For a warming hut, the building’s sparse benefits are limited to enclosed walls, benches, and a plethora of pit toilets. It’s warmer than outside. Outside is cold. We slowwwwly peel ourselves off the benches to dive back into the elements for one last push for the day up Mt. Flora.
In the James Peak Wilderness, Mt. Flora (13,123 feet) is cool, with her summit rock bivy and snowfields on the north slope in July. It’s not the mountain that’s exciting but the fire of more trail magic: trailside tacos and drinks at Rainbow Rd. near St. Mary’s, Colorado. Thanks to the friends of Bus Driver from the PCT, close to ten CDT hikers are able to cap this long day with made-to-order tacos, chips, cold drinks, and lawn chairs.
James Peak and Rollins Pass
I’m told there’s ONE LAST CLIMB before our stay in Grand Lake. One. Last. Climb. James Peak.
We leave the boys hungover from the night before, peacefully cowboy camping around the campfire ring at the Rainbow Rd. campsite, and start the heck of an endless climb up James Peak (13,309 feet). Not steep, not complicated. Just endless.
An endless climb turns quickly into an endlessly windy escarpment, the trail following the faintest of footpaths in the grass hugging the divide for miles. It’s gorgeous and scenic. And of course windy; the latter making it troublesome to talk, walk, or breathe. With my mid-layer, rain jacket, and wind pants on for warmth, the saving grace is that the sky is clear blue and not raining. On this day, the delaminated outer layer of my UL Frogg Toggs rain jacket rips, a long strip of waterproofing flapping in the wind.
Rollins Pass is today’s major landmark. A Registered Historical Place, Rollins Pass has been used for over 10,000 years by humans as a game drive and navigable route through the rough Continental Divide landscape.
Bus Driver and I eat a quick lunch in the shelter of the low concrete foundation, ruins of a historical Inn (marked as the Rollins Pass Dining Hall on our maps). We watch a guided tour of ATVers pass through while we eat. Animals, humans, wagons, and trains have used the pass for hundreds of years to head westward as CDT hikers cross through north/south along the divide. It’s a point to rest, to briefly escape the weather and dread the zig-zaggy switchbacks ahead, just as many have done in this place that feels spiritual to the region.
It’s not till miles later, past Devils Thumb Pass, that the CDT finally heads down through burn zone into the calmer lowlands. My first moose spotting is confirmed, a male and female standing in a meadow near the wide pathway, and mosquitos make a reappearance. One night left and we’re ready to tackle the last 20 miles to Grand Lake.
Grand Lake
It’s the 4th of July, I haven’t showered in nine days (after in-and-outing Breckenridge), and I stick out like a broken trekking pole in the town of Grand Lake. Especially since I’m not wearing red, white… or blue. In my grungy hiking outfit and pack I noticeably don’t fit in.
The morning’s hike to Monarch Lake for a late tea break, and then to Lake Granby, Shadow Mountain Lake, and Grand Lake is hot and mostly exposed. The trail hugs lakes and rivers before darting back into the sparse woodlands of Indian Peaks Wilderness and Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness. These miles go by fast yet oh so slow after the terrain of days past.

Most notable of Grand Lake is that blazes are arranged to directionally show the CDT route through town. What a concept!
By early afternoon, 19.4 miles hiked, we are present in the decorated streets of Grand Lake to torment the tourists. Kids run by in holiday-themed swimsuits as I plod along with my pack and trekking poles. At The Hub Coffeehouse, Double Dip, Bus Driver and I are trail magic-ed milkshakes from a past Colorado Trail hiker before meeting up with Hal and B, our hosts. These are family friends of Double Dip. Bless the kind hearts of Hal and B who bravely bring three hungry, stinky, thru-hikers to a classy Fourth of July BBQ in the nearby ranching town of Granby.
We might be blind to the hiker stink, but I know everyone else is not. The folks at this BBQ act none the disturbed to our funk. The stress of the past few days is forgotten with warm kindness and bellies stuffed to the brim. To them we are invincible – we feel rightly so having hiked some of the hardest terrain of the CDT.
Our zero day in Granby, Colorado, is unforgettable. Warm beds for two nights, great food, amazing company, and a trip down memory lane for Hal who was the 13th person to hike the PCT back in 1974. There are horses to feed with B, a donkey named Clarence, and mountains to drive around as Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones plays on the radio. My favorite memory though? That would be the Granby Regional Airport’s Fly-In Pancake Breakfast watching small propeller planes fly loops around the airstrip.
From Lows to Highs
Finding yourself in the north-central mountains next to a PCT hiker from 1974, both laughing in glee at the roar of a two-seater prop plane? That is the unexpected experience of a thru-hike that keeps someone moving forward. There’s nothing like the mystery of what’s to come.
Thru-hikers comfortable in Colorado terrain had a blast in the mountainous Front Range. While we all have stories to tell, some emerged from the ridges with tales of unmarked spines linking high peaks missed by the CDT. Adventurous nights were spent above 12,000 feet in rock bivys, guy-lines snapping in the wind, burritoed in tent rain flys for storm protection. I followed more of a subdued, plan ahead approach staying along the main CDT and camping below treeline in the confines of my tent.
For all of us, each day on the Divide had so much to say and provide in lessons of exploration and imperfection. The worst was now behind us. We felt malnourished and unstoppable.
We never got back to tag Grays Peak.
Critical Gear
- Trekking poles. To keep driving forward.
- Rain jacket. For insulation against rain and wind.
- Mid-Layer with a hood. For insulation without overheating.
- Snacks. Shelter from wind, rain, and mosquitos for proper breaks may be hard to find.
- An ability to apologize. For your funk to kind strangers as they offer heaps of food.
- Something red, white, or blue. To blend in with tourists on the Fourth of July.
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Comments 3
I enjoyed reading your journal of your CDT hike. Was the Hal you met at Grand Lake, Hal Simmons? We stayed with him when I did the CDT in 1977. One of the guys I was hiking with had met him previously on the PCT. You can read my journal for my 1977 CDT hike and my other hikes at: trailjournals.com/daveodell. David Odell AT71 PCT72 CDT77
Thanks for following along! Wow, what a small community. It was Hal Simmons who we stayed with near Grand Lake! A Triple Crown in the 1970s is impressive – the dedication in what must have been some tough (yet, I’m sure Type 2 enjoyable) trail conditions. I’ll be giving your journals a read!
Good to hear from you. We stayed with Hal at a ranch that was located at the time inside the National Park. Enjoy my journals. Pretty basic, but will give you an idea what hiking was like back in the 70’s.