Long Way To The Trail

  Fires, Injury and Bears, Oh My

Just getting onto the Colorado Trail has been more difficult than even hiking it…well, maybe not, but close.

In June, I headed towards Denver and the Waterton Canyon trailhead with smoke hanging heavy, it just didn’t seem worth it.  The wildfire smoke was just too thick and I would’ve been a fool to think that it would’ve even been a bit enjoyable to hike in. It just wouldn’t have been worth it to thru hike any amount of miles and have no views.

Also, right before that as I changed my hike all together to just do the CT and explore the other stuff on the CDT later, I injured myself.  Not in the most usual way either.  Just happened to get into my truck wrong, pulled the knee back, and boom, stuck and pretty intense pain.  My driver side door is all messed up, so I get in on the passenger side, which messes with my knee.  Dang the bad luck!

There really is no such thing as a pefect situation, perfect beginning to a thru hike, or many right times to do things.  Given the options of hiking in smoke and on an injured leg or waiting for my leg to recover and possibly better conditions, I’ll opt for the latter.

Oh yeah, I was hiking near a bear on the CDT, or it was stalking me, I don’t know.  It was cool, but pretty unnerving to be hiking and not even know a bear was in the area until I saw a big old pile of poo on my way back to my truck. T

There was also the night hike where I was on a local trail and got stalked by a mountain lion.  Even failed to bring the bear spray, so if anything went down, I was toast because trekking poles lose every time against a mountain lion.

I guess nothing destroys the metal, but it can get injured and scared as hell by bears and mountain lions.  I started out confident and maybe cocky being a doofus metal head hiker and got shut down almost immediately.  Yup, you can scare the metal appeently.

 

   It’s a Long Way to The Trailhead If You Want to Thru Hike

So, with all that said, I was set back like 6 weeks because of injury and smoke filled skies.  If all goes well, this week I’ll be starting my thru hike of the Colorado Trail and when that’s done, I’ll hopefully explore as much of the CDT as I can.

Wanting to thru hike has been something I’ve wanted for a long time and I can say with confidence that it’s finally here.  Setbacks aside, I think it’s going to be a great experience.  Just getting to the trailhead will mean even more now than it did just a month or two ago.

There’s no way around it, planning for a thru hike, or anything in life has a fair share of curveballs that will be thrown at you.  Even before I hit the trail, I got thrown a couple that threw me off for 6 weeks now.

One silver lining out of it all was being able to see  Guns n’ Roses in Denver earlier this week, which would’ve been a bummer to miss.  It would have been hard to figure out in the middle of a thru hike, too, so I think it worked out pretty good.  Who knows, this might be the perfect way to kick off a thru hike.  If I stay out there long enough, maybe I’ll get caught in that November rain, or snow.

 

 

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