The Best Part?

If there is one rumor that spreads on the Colorado Trail, it is this:

The San Juan’s make all the pain worth it.

On July 20th, 2021, Mary, myself, Weatherman, Ryan, and Tailwind all woke up knowing that today was the day: we were headed deep into the mountains. The most beautiful, wild, rugged, dangerous mountains so far.

I was ready. And also… not.

We woke up to soft pink skies against alpine tundra and I felt both a sense of dread and a sense of excitement in knowing we would be heading into the most highly-spoken terrain of the trail. On top of that, I had another treat coming my way: my boyfriend was was flying in from Michigan to join us for the last 100 miles, and there was a pretty good chance today was the day we would cross paths and begin hiking together.

The first thing I noticed when we began hiking at 6:30 a.m. were the cumulus clouds already gathering on the horizon: a sure sign of thunderstorms later on in the day. As we began hiking, I kept my eyes glued on the sky, and as the first hour or so passed, the clouds cleared and my anxiety began to relieve.

We started above tree-line and only went uphill from there. The high point of the whole trail – and my whole life – was 5 miles from camp. 13,000 feet and some change. To arrive we climbed up and over several hills – each of which I, of course, thought were the high-point. When we arrived I felt a sense of relief.

Only downhill from there, right?

Heading downhill was treacherous: we walked on a dirt Jeep road that was slippery and Weatherman, Mary and I each took turns with our near falls. After a mile or two downhill we crossed a stream where Tailwind and Ryan were waiting after losing us on the uphill. This stream was the first reliable source in many miles and a community of thirsty hikers gathered around, many of which we didn’t know.

As we ate lunch at the stream, we all noticed the clouds building over the valley. Luckily, a guy named “Just Todd” arrived and told us the weather forecast was that it was just going to be rain, so we all decided to keep walking until something stopped us.

Todd joined our group and immediately I liked him. He was probably in his 60s, had climbed every 14er in Colorado, and was a great guy with a great sense of humor. He also had a Garmin InReach so he was nice to have around 🙂

We pressed on cautiously as a group toward another high point on the trail. Suddenly as we were walking a giant lightning bolt streaked across the sky and an immediate loud boom scattered us all into the bushes and low trees beside the trail. It was obvious that we needed to wait, so we spent about 45 minutes hunched down, taking naps in our rain gear waiting for the storm on just the other side of the mountain to pass.

Should we go?

After 45 minutes, the storm was clearing and blue skies opened up. We all reassembled and began to head up the mountain. Weatherman, Todd and I climbed together and Todd applauded our group on our caution. Up ahead we saw many hikers who had chosen to brave the alpine and continue despite the storm.

We climbed up and over another 12,000 foot, exposed pass. Mary was lagging behind – unusual for her – so I waited and we lost Weatherman and Todd for a bit. As we descended the pass we looked over toward the southwest and saw a deep dark blue – almost black – storm raging over the mountain range. We had one or two more exposed passes for the day before we were going to land at our planned campsite, but the odds of making it looked slim.

At the bottom of the descent there was a beautiful lake surrounded by big rocks, small trees, and bushes. Around the lake were about 15 hikers, all waiting for the afternoon storms to pass before continuing on. Our group all congregated at the beautiful site and made ourselves dinners and hot chocolates and whatever else we desired. We decided to wait an hour or two before deciding if we should keep hiking or camp for the night.

I would’ve been fine with camping at the beautiful spot for the night except one problem: the day before I had set a place to meet Steffano – my boyfriend – and it was still about 5 miles ahead. I didn’t want to leave him stranded alone in the high mountains on his first night on the trail, wondering where we were, so I prayed the storms would pass and we could safely press on.

After 2 hours of relaxing by the stormy shores of the alpine lake, the skies were clearing and our group – Todd included – decided we could keep hiking. We hiked up another pass, across rocky scree, and down into alpine valley after alpine valley. The rocks were so colorful with blue tints I had never seen before, and there were no trees for miles.

The Evening

About 3 miles in, I stopped leading the pack and stepped off the trail to go to the bathroom. This left me a bit behind the whole group and as I struggled to catch my breath in the 12,000 foot air, I noticed the whole group stopped around somebody coming the other way.

A big smile spread across my face as I realized it was Steffano! I quickened my step to catch up and gave him a big hug and welcome to the trail family and trail life.

We were near the top of the climb, so we finished the climb and introduced everyone. Just Todd was in awe that Steffano had hiked so far to meet up with us – especially on such a bad weather day – and I was so happy to finally have him on trail with me!

Poor Steffano

Having Steffano on trail was great for me, but not so much for him. We had made every mistake in the book in order to see each other as soon as possible, and Steffano had not acclimated enough – having come straight from sea level – nor really trained for the type of hard hiking we were doing. The rest of the group had been walking for nearly 3 weeks to get to the shape they were in, and while Steffano is an athletic dude, nothing can prepare you for 12,000 feet when you have been living at 500 feet.

After the adrenaline wore off and we still had about 2 miles left to go for the day, Steffano began struggling up the hills with his backpack and his red blood cells not used to 50% oxygen levels. I felt great, but stayed behind with him, laughing a bit at him as he struggled (oops!), and trying to mentally help him up the hills. The group got ahead of us on the last big uphill, but as we came down we could see them making camp in a big open alpine valley (there were no trees for miles in every direction), and I could see the relief on Steffano’s face that we would be done for the day.

We walked into camp and I set up tent, cooked our food, and did pretty much everything as Steffano could barely move ( and was definitely, we discovered in retrospect, suffering from altitude sickness). At dusk we all crawled into our tents and set our alarms for 4:30 the next morning (much to Steffano’s dismay), as we had to make it over the last large alpine section before the afternoon storms came rumbling in again.