In Which I Don’t Take the Creede Cutoff
To Creede Cutoff or not to Creede Cutoff… that is the question.
After spending days struggling through the snowy Southern San Juans, CDT NOBO hikers are faced with a decision: do they continue through the mountains along the redline, or take the lower-elevation Creede Cutoff?

Even if you take the cutoff, you’re still faced with almost 100 miles of beautiful and challenging San Juan terrain.
The Cutoff slices away 117 miles of arguably some of the CDT’s most stunning landscape, but allows you a reprieve from the truly grueling hiking of the week before.
After the hours of painful postholing and a frustratingly slow pace into Pagosa Springs, I decide to take the Creede Cutoff.
And, then, I change my mind.
Day One: “I think I’ll take the cutoff”
I am very at peace with my decision to take the Creede Cutoff. I can tell I’m not lying to myself by how poorly I’m sleeping and how terrible my mood is.
In the late afternoon, I catch a hitch out of Pagosa Springs with three men in their RV; they were initially planning on dropping me off at a waterfall eight miles before the pass, but were impressed hearing about the trail and ended up taking me all the way to the road-trail junction. I love people.
After only five or so miles, my tramily and I stop next to a beautiful lake and make camp for the night, along with another group of hikers. Tomorrow, we will split in two, as half of us continues on the redline through the San Juans, and half of us take the faster, lower-elevation alternate into Creede.
Hamilton says to the redline group, “I’m very happy for you, but I’m also very happy for us. I hope you have so much fun but I know I’m going to have so much more fun if I take the Cutoff.” I think about this all night.
Deep in my heart, I know I would not have more fun if I take the Creede Cutoff, but I’ve already made my choice. Most importantly, I’ve only packed enough food to take me the three days into Creede instead of the six days it would take to navigate the redline. It’s simply too late to back out.
Day Two: “I think I’ll take the redline”
I wake with Ham’s “I’m going to have so much more fun if I take the cutoff” going through my head, and spend the beautiful morning miles dissecting why I feel so terrible about taking the alternate:
- The Creede Cutoff skips the moment of the CDT that connects to the Colorado Trail, and I’ve been looking forward to experiencing that since hiking the CT in 2022.
- The Cutoff also skips nearly 100 miles of the San Juan Mountains and Weminuche Wilderness– two of my favorite places on Earth.
- I’d been saying since the beginning of my CDT planning process that I really didn’t want to take the Cutoff. I know a thru-hike is largely about adapting to circumstances and accepting changing plans, but this is a hard dream to relinquish.
Not far out of camp, I start crying, and can’t really justify why. The mountains are absolutely stunning, the trail free of snow, and there is no logical reason why I shouldn’t be having a blast. Luckily, during the first big climb of the day, I have service, and use it to call my boyfriend.
Through a poor connection and several dropped calls, he tries to understand why I’m so upset, but I’m having a hard time explaining it. Finally, he helps me realize that I’m just not willing to say goodbye to my plan of taking the redline out of Pagosa Springs.
Does this all sound stupid, insignificant, and unimportant to you? That’s fine; It kind of is. But, when you condense your whole life down into a thru-hike, these are the kind of decisions that can shape your mood and experience. Plus, I’ve been hiking for almost 50 days– I feel entitled to one little meltdown.
Two miles away from the Cutoff, I tell Bus Driver my plan: scrounge as much food as I can from my friends taking the Cutoff, and join another group headed down the redline. Instead of immediately jumping on board, she helps walk me through all the potential issues and pitfalls of this plan. I’m immensely grateful for this; Consequences for mistakes made while backpacking can be extreme, and I really value a friend willing to push back against a sudden changed plan in the name of safety.
Luckily, thanks to the generosity of my tramily, I’m able to piece together enough calories for an additional four days on trail. I hug the crew goodbye, and head up the first big climb of the redline. The combination of adrenaline and threatening thunderclouds fuels me, and I absolutely fly to the top. Just after seeing the first panoramic view, I know I’ve made the right decision. I am so, so, so incredibly thrilled to be in this moment.
Day Three: “I’m so mad I took the redline”
Today tests my resolve in my decision in almost every conceivable way.
Since most of the day will be above treeline, I check the weather with my Garmin, and it says there is a chance of storms from around 9AM to 9PM tomorrow. I figure that is wrong because when on earth does Colorado act like that? Today, it does.
The morning dawns overcast and cloudy, but fairly dry. However, about ten miles into the day, the low-hanging, dreary clouds start to coalesce into real, dark, rain clouds. Right as we reach Knife’s Edge, it starts raining hard, forcing us to scramble down the side of the face into the valley.
Frustrated with the weather, cold to my bones, and fed up with hiking, I pitch my tent in the valley for an hour to wait out the rest of the rain. I’m not particularly comfortable– I don’t want my sleeping gear to get wet– so I sit, shivering, in my tent until I hear the rain slow.
Once it stops, I wait for the cloud cover to break apart and show some blue sky before I head out of the valley and up the next climb. Usually, once a Colorado storm breaks, it’s over. This time, however, new dark clouds start rolling in as I crest the top of the hill.
This leads to me sprinting down the ridge line, desperately seeking tree cover, as thunder begins to boom around me. I played it very cool and very collected (I cried heavily) as I see lighting strike the ridge line I’m currently sprinting across.
Seconds after reaching tree cover, hail starts falling heavily. Over the next thirty minutes, four inches of hail fall around where I’m sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees and my Tyvek pulled up to shield my body.
Once the hail dissipates into rain, I set up my wet tent, crawl into my wet sleep clothes, and– too anxious from the evening– go to bed without dinner.
Day Four: “I’m so happy I took the redline!”
Shaken from the storm yesterday– and a miserable, cold, wet night– I get a slow start this morning. The hail from yesterday evening thawed slightly before freezing overnight, leaving a nice layer of ice for me to navigate over the trail.
Once I cross my first pass and warm up in the sun, the day starts to get better. That is, until the clouds start forming again. This time, the universe listens to my pleading, and I manage to pop up and over the large pass before the storm fully hits. I’m able to watch from the relative safety of the next valley as the giant, black mushroom cloud pushes up against the pass. Thunder rumbles far in the distance, but none of the weather reaches me.
Camp is a calm and pleasant affair– a far cry from the freezing, wet, and stressful night before. All my things are dry, and I get a wonderful nights sleep nestled in a meadow next to a winding river. Life is good again.
Day Five: “Everyone should redline!!”
The clouds today stay fluffy and far apart, the mountains seem to flaunt their beauty at every opportunity, and I run into two friends (Beaver & Potato) while taking a lunch break.
After hearing from Potato (and his Garmin weather checks) that Friday would be a particularly nasty day of storms, I decide to stick with the two of them and push larger miles to get into Creede while the weather stays peaceful.
We spend the rest of the day together walking through the last portion of the CDT in the San Juans that I haven’t already seen. Each new pass brings a completely unique and stunning sight. We break frequently at the top of climbs to sit and soak in the jaw dropping majesty of the mountains.
Finally, I reach the long-awaited moment where the CDT overlaps with the Colorado Trail. These mountains are somehow both so familiar and unexpected, with the change of direction and time of year painting the landscape in a different light.
I cowboy camp at 13,000 feet, surrounded by new friends, on a trail I love with my whole heart.
Day Six: “I’m running out of things I’ve said about the redline!!”
Today, I am on fire. I wake up early, shoot out of camp, and tackle climb after climb without stopping for 13 miles. Nothing can phase me now that I’m back on the Colorado Trail.
I spend the morning playing the memory game with myself– “that’s where I ducked off trail and crouched in the willows during that thunderstorm”. “That’s the little stream I stopped at for lunch”. “There’s the lake I drank out of before realizing the water was filled with tiny shrimp”.

I try my hardest to keep this monologue internal. If it’s repetitive to me, I can’t imagine what it would sound like to someone else.
It may be a repetitive game, but it causes the morning to pass incredibly quickly. We stop at Cataract Lake (the lake teeming with little shrimp) and skinny dip before soaking in the views over lunch. Much like two years prior, a family of moose call this lake home, and I get to watch them stomp and bob around in the willows.

Turns out my camera has pretty bad zoom features; I could see the moose with my eyes, but the photos don’t do it justice!
After lunch, we have a challenging climb to the high point on the Colorado Trail, where we are chased by dark clouds until we descend back below treeline on the other side. We find a perfect campsite nestled in the pines, enjoy dinner together, and fall into a deep sleep.
Day Six: “Maybe all the matters is you choose the line that’s best for you!”
I’m so grateful I pushed larger miles towards the end of the section.
I wake just nine miles from the parking lot, and am able to cruise down to the hitching point in under three hours. It only rains for the final 45 minutes.
We grab a ride with Max (the second car to pass by!) and head into Creede for some highly anticipated rest and relaxation. Later, we’d learn that the trail just 10 miles behind us experienced white-out blizzard conditions that we barely dodged.
Sorry that everyone can’t be as lucky and cool as us!
I relish my time in Creede– one of my favorite towns in Colorado– before getting ready to get back on trail. I’m proud of myself for staying on the redline and experiencing this part of the trail that’s so important to me. It was a challenging, long, and sometimes frustrating experience, but certainly one I wouldn’t trade for the world.
The San Juans will probably always be my favorite mountain range on this world. I’m overwhelmingly grateful for the week and a half I got to spend meandering my way through them.
More than that, I can’t wait for all the various colored lines and alternates to reconvene so I can reconnect with my friends taking different paths. No CDT hike looks the same, and no CDT hike is better than anyone else’s. That said, I’m pretty happy with how mine is looking so far.
This website contains affiliate links, which means The Trek may receive a percentage of any product or service you purchase using the links in the articles or advertisements. The buyer pays the same price as they would otherwise, and your purchase helps to support The Trek's ongoing goal to serve you quality backpacking advice and information. Thanks for your support!
To learn more, please visit the About This Site page.