Thru-hiking. But without the hiking. (part 1)

Exactly One Year Later

June 25th, 2021: I walk into Durango, Colorado with 485 miles under my belt.

Zoom forward a year (seeing, through the blur, a whirlwind of Michigan seasons and college classes)

June 25th, 2022: I am stuck in Denver Colorado, 17 hours from my home, missing when I used just my own two legs to get around (because at least my own two legs don’t leave me stranded alongside Highway I-70 for 4 hours!)

What got me in this situation is that I missed the mountains. More specifically, I missed that hair-raising, unpredictable, delicately hardy biome we call the Alpine Tundra. I needed to see the Milky way and wildflowers and twenty headlamps climbing a breathless mountain at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m. So I planned, alongside my college friend Emily, a week long sojourn of reminiscing and frolicking above tree line. Our plan: drive to Colorado, find a place to camp, exist in mountains, drive home (to Michigan). A simple, good, cheap plan.

In Chicago I picked up a (pre-planned, friend-from-high-school) hitch-hiker who said she was going to hike the Colorado Trail. I said, you’re in luck! I know where the trailhead is! So she got in the back of my Volvo S40 with her dog and we drove through the night, dropping her off and sending her off just as the afternoon thunderstorm began to dump into the canyon.

Now, I wouldn’t be posting this blog to The Trek if it didn’t have anything to do with thru-hiking. Or, more specifically, the Colorado Trail. But I will add this disclaimer before we continue: I never actually thru-hike in the entirety of this blog post. But, by the time all my misfortunes play out, I’ll nearly feel that I had.

Meranda

We were just past Alma, Colorado, near the tree line, when my car started steaming (some might say smoking). A few too many hours of driving and too many feet of elevation gain meant Emily and I found ourselves at 6 p.m. on the side of a dirt road with a car that was as tired as we were. The view, of course, was absolutely incredible: an alpine valley with a rushing river and willows climbing up to 14,000 foot peaks. The afternoon sun making everything golden. It was so good I could’ve turned home happy and drove back to Michigan, but instead I was sitting with my hood up, my coolant smoking, and my head in my hands: What am I going to do?

Enter: Meranda.

Meranda was the first of many people to pass us, headed up to camp at Kite Lake, the basecamp for a 7 mile loop with four fourteeners. A mother, an art teacher, a thru-hiker, and an all around bad-ass, she’s a trail angel who saw a few girls who needed a ride and she pulled her FWD Tundra over and asked in her slight Texas accent, “you girls having some car trouble?”. After assessing the damage she looked at us and said, “How about I take you two down to Alma to get some coolant, you put it in your car, I’ll drive you up to the trailhead with your stuff, we hike tomorrow, and I’ll drive you back down and we’ll deal with the car tomorrow. You’re up here now, you might as well get your hike in.” So, like the thru-hiker I am, I looked at her, looked at her car full of camping gear, and got in her passenger seat. Emily, my vacation partner, looked a little less eager but seeing no other option, she squeezed in the front seat with me and we all started heading down into town.

Somewhere on the way down to Alma we realized: Meranda was the coolest. She had spent the last month living out of her Tundra Truck, hiking everyday, camping, and climbing fourteeners. In fact, she had spent every July out in Colorado for the past 10+ years living in the wilderness, being the bum she truly was. I felt inspired. The year before she had been on the Collegiate portion of the CT at the same time I was. I started throwing out trail names asking, “Did you ever meet Tetris? Weatherman? REI Mike?” None stuck, but by the time we’d made it town, bought coolant, and made it back up to the car, one thing was settled: Meranda had adopted us as her trail kids, and she was our fourteener mom.

At our car, Emily and I packed up our stuff and Meranda drove us the rest of the dirt road to the trailhead. We set up our tent, drank a ton of water, and made some dinner. We set our alarms for 4:30 a.m. and went to bed. T

I woke up to my alarm and opened my Big Agnes two-person tent to a sky full of stars. Following the stars down, I noticed they continued onto the mountains as headlamps: people were already nearing the top. To the east, the light hadn’t even started to dawn but there was a full moon shining brightly, illuminating everything I could see.

Our food was stored in Meranda’s truck and she was brewing some coffee for us. Like I said, she’s the coolest. We hit the trail around 5:30 and began what ended up being one of the hardest hikes of my life, for various reasons. For 7 hours we hiked together, criss-crossing with Meranda and several other hikers, talking, chatting, laughing and bagging three fourteeners!

In total, the hike was only seven miles. Seven brutal miles. We finished in the afternoon to a still blazing sun. Emily was feeling the affects of the altitude and I was still just thrilled to be there. When Meranda finished a bit after we did, she drove us back down to our car and we checked the coolant: it was all still there. The car started and Meranda followed us down the mountain to make sure we were okay. We made it to Alma safely and got out to say goodbye. It had been less than 24 hours in Colorado, and we’d already been adopted as trail daughters. I was worried about my car, but I was so glad to be back!

Just Todd

A few days passed after our day with Meranda, and Emily and I based ourselves in Frisco, Colorado. From Frisco we’d do day hikes up to various peaks and waterfalls, and then every night we’d find a campsite somewhere along Dillon Reservoir. It was a pretty sweet setup. One evening while cooking dinner on my little backpacking stove by the reservoir, Emily and I were discussing our hike for the next day. I looked up at the mountains and pointed to one – the closest one to Frisco – and said, “I think we should do that one”. Emily agreed and the plan was set.

Upon looking at AllTrails, Emily and I thought the name of this peak was Mt. Victoria. The hike was a 5-ish mile difficult roundtrip hike. All up on the way up, all down on the way down. In the morning we stopped in town to get our favorite fuel: coffee. Then, a minute later, we were at the trailhead. The trail was stee-eep! Up and up and and up, it took a long time to above the trees. A few hours (and miles) into our hike we finally begin to break tree line and we see – in the further-than-we-thought-distance – the peak we were planning on summitting.

In that moment I realized, uh-oh, I don’t think I got the right AllTrails trail.

We were already 2.2 miles in, nearly to “Mt. Victoria”, which we realized was really just a small bump on the road to where we really wanted to go. Looking up, there were lots of clouds in the sky, all still small, but I didn’t know how far that far-off peak really was, or how long it would take us, and it looked like rocky scree to the top. I don’t like taking my chances above tree-line.

I was feeling disappointed that we didn’t make it to our goal as we made it to the small rock that counted as Mt. Victoria. We stopped there to eat and assess the situation and I wasn’t feeling too good about how many uncertainties we were facing: how far to the top, how well the weather would hold up, etc. I was feeling like it might be best to turn around after we finished eating and head back down. Emily agreed. As I was about to bite into a bagel, I noticed a man walk out of the trees. I immediately recognized the walk and I turned to Emily and said, “I think I know this guy”. He continued to make his way up the trail toward us and as he came up within talking distance I made eye contact and asked him, “Did you do the Colorado Trail last year?…. Just Todd?” He looked right back at me, slight recognition coming over his face and I offered, “It’s Ada! We walked together over the San Juans!” and as it dawned on him who I was we both laughed in surprise! What a coincidence!

Todd and I spent a few minutes catching up on our mutual trail friends and our lives, and he encouraged us to continue hiking. He told us the peak we were looking at was called “Peak 1” and he said it was a 45 minute hike, and the weather looked fine to him. Todd always showed up on the trail when we needed him (and his Garmin InReach), and he pulled through on this hike too. After a nice long chat Todd went ahead saying, “see you both at the top!” and we knew we had to summit.

We continued hiking up to what ended up being the most thrilling, perfect hike of the whole trip! The hiking was rocky and hard, and towards the top was a small scramble that made my heart race and hands sweaty, but we were rewarded with views in every direction and a beautiful sense of accomplishment at the top. Hiking down, criss-crossing with Just Todd, I felt the most intense nostalgia come over me for the trail. How was it true that just a year ago I was hiking with my trail family, camping in the wilderness everyday, spending days in the woods and the tundra? It seemed like a different lifetime.

Later that day I realized it had been exactly one year to the day when I had first met Just Todd on that brutally stormy day in the San Juans. How weird, exactly a year later, to cross paths with him on the side of an entirely different mountain.

Story continues in part 2