#cdt2015

“When I told my mom I work on an industrial marijuana farm,” the caretaker explains, “she was very disappointed.”

“Which was harder...” we ask follow-up questions, “telling her you’re gay? Or telling her you work on a pot farm?”

“Well…” he replies. He turns around at the bar and retrieves an amber bottle. “Care to Irish up your coffee?” Before we can answer, he splashes Bailey’s in our hot cups.

There are strange places along this trail…

Earlier that morning, I’m walking with a hiker named MeHap and we arrive at the Arapaho Wilderness Ranch south of Granby Lake. On the gate a sign says “Closed,” but inside the gate a sign says “Camp Store Open.” We could use some extra calories and respite from rain, so we follow the dirt road inside.

We arrive at a forest cabin in seeming disrepair. “Hey whatsup?” a groggy man’s voice calls from a rusty trailer behind some trees.

“Is the camp store open?”

“No, but I’ll open it for you boys.”

The trailer door swings open and a jolly round man emerges with a long gray beard. He looks like Hagrid from Hogwarts.

“Follow me.” He leads us into the cabin. Its exterior does not match its interior. Inside we discover persian rugs, luxury sofas, a baby grand piano, walls of books, and fine art. We follow him through many rooms – a parlor, dining room, solarium, a second dining room – and arrive in a showroom with fluorescent lights and glass cases displaying woven rugs and native crafts.

“Over here.” He leads us to a case with chips, soda, and candy boxes. We buy a couple Snickers and a Coke. “You boys drink coffee?”

We wait for percolation in the solarium. I examine a wild stallion painted in oil. Nostrils flared, hooves in the air, eyes wide with fear, it’s rendered in psychedelic colors like a Gauguin hallucination. It’s huge and terrorizes the room. “Coffee’s ready boys,” he calls from the dining room.

We fill our cups and he asks, “You boys want to see the smallest bar in Colorado?” He opens a small door---ostensibly a broom closet---and reveals a tiny room with wooden paneled bar, art glass lamps, and two barstools.

Inside the bar he tells us everything. We learn that the history of the ranch involves an heiress, a love story, a yellow race car, and Guatemala.

We sign a leather bound guestbook. What is this place? I write.

The continental divide trail is known for pointless ups and downs, i.e. PUDs. For example, the trail climbs 700 feet along the divide, then descends 500 feet, climbs 400, drops 800, and so on. PUDs indeed feel pointless. A trail with better engineering---such as the Pacific Crest Trail---instead contours around high ridges to avoid uncesseary elevation changes. However, much of the CDT was never engineered; rather, the trail follows historic fire breaks, donkey paths, and whimsical jeep tracks.

Hiking through PUDs engenders empathy with Sisyphus, the Greek king punished by gods to roll a boulder uphill only to watch it roll back down everyday. All CDT hikers become Sisyphus, forced to embrace the absurdity of seeing their hard work done and then un-done. Following a trail whose path seems arbitrary, the traveler chooses to react with frustration or humor. Choosing the former has caused many hikers to quit.

Enroute to Grand Lake, after several days hiking PUDs in the Rabbit Ears Range, I summit Parkview Mountain. An abandoned fire lookout remains on the peak. It's a crumbling cube of conrete, tin, and cracked wood. On the summit, the wind is fierce so I take shelter inside. I discover the walls to be graffitied with names of CDT hikers past and present. No longer a fire lookout, this little house is now an unintended shrine to Sisyphus. All the previous pilgrims endured the same pointless climbs and descents to reach this high place, and this little grotto of names is a prayer for strength to rise above the fatigue. Like that Greek king, my summit celebration is brief and made poignant by the knowledge of seemingly endless miles yet to come. I add my name to the collection on the walls and I wonder how long this shrine will remain. Will my signature on this wall outlive me?

A wolf howls at dusk, to the east of my camp on the Wyoming-Colorado state line. It’s a wild canine sound, with more melancholy baritone than coyotes, and with more power than domestic dogs. I am delighted to hear this wolf song, as I've been hoping to witness wolves on this trip.

Two wolves howl in response from the west and south. The howls repeat and seem closer. The vision of three or more wolves converging on my camp grows in my imagination. It’s now dark with no moon. Another crossfire of calls comes closer, and it feels like the pack could erupt from the forest any moment. I beat a metal stake against my cookpot. Clang, clang, clang, the little pot staccatos in the night. I hear no further howling and I never see the wolves – perhaps that’s a good thing.

The CDT southbound from Rawlins to Steamboat Springs is one hundred and fifty-five miles of trails and abandoned jeep tracks. It’s diverse ecologically, geologically, and politically. It climbs from Wyoming’s Red Desert into Colorado’s Rocky Mountains – along the way it crosses two national forests and two federal wildernesses. It begins with a thirty mile waterless walk across the desert, and tops out near 12,000’ elevation on Lost Ranger Peak in Colorado’s Park Range. The mountains here expose quartz veins with giant crystal boulders in seemingly endless ridgetop flower gardens. Daily thunderstorms add an element of danger because the CDT is high and exposed with little tree cover.

I’m walking across the desert along a road, and a jolly moustached man in a pickup truck asks if I need water. I do, in fact, and he shares a couple cold liters. A herd of violent thunderstorms migrates across the road ahead, and we’re patient to wait. We chat about the trail, and careers, and life. He’s a chemical engineer for an oil company, and he tells me about the science of identifying and removing impurities.

I’m eating a neopolitan ice cream sandwich outside the Conoco station in Rawlins. A young mom with a minivan is pumping gasoline and walks over to me. “Hey, what do you think about Bernie Sanders?” she asks. “I haven’t really thought about him,” I reply. “Well, he’s an incredible guy,” she begins, and then delivers a passionate pitch for his presidential campaign. I listen with respect, but really I’m more interested in my sandwich – specifically, the parts where the flavors mix. It’s always a surprise when strawberry combines with vanilla.

She continues on, and I wonder what forces conspired to make chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry the most popular three ice cream flavors in America. I imagine an alternate world where other flavors – pistacchio, blueberry, and orange cream – reign supreme in our hearts, minds, and tastebuds. I imagine a future where every Conoco station makes their own unique flavored ice cream sandwich, and tourists from Europe road trip around The West on rented Harley Davidson motorbikes visiting all the Conoco stations and savoring the local flavors and praising the diversity.

The CDT is like a small town three thousand miles long and three feet wide. Thru-hikers relay stories up and down the trail. Rumors spread; facts become fiction; legends are born.

Some thru-hikers go northbound from Mexico, while others go southbound from Canada. These two communities inevitably collide and mix their oral histories. I’ve encountered a steady stream of northbounders as I hiked south from Togwotee Pass. Every encounter feels absurd and impossible. After walking thousands of miles in opposite directions, we finally meet in wilderness meadows, on lonely ridgetops, and beside pristine lakes. Their future is my past, and vice versa. We exchange valuable information about water sources and trail detours. Mostly, however, we share stories: grizzly bear encounters, lightning strikes, flash floods, snowstorms, hilarious gear failures, and heroic feats of athleticism.

Stories… A northbounder named Lieutenant Dan was the first hiker this year to persevere through Colorado’s early season snow; his success is a world-class mountaineering achievement that will likely go unnoticed by anyone outside our community. Hikers named Lala and DayMan watched a bear hunt elk herds in an alpine meadow for hours. RestStop says 5,000 oil workers have arrived in the town of Rawlins, and motel rooms are scarce. Atlas says the Episcopal church in Pinedale welcomes hikers to stay overnight. Eleanor suggests I cross the glacier rather than climb the boulders on the east face of Knapsack Col. Guy-on-a-Buffalo discovered marijuana bales awaiting cartel pickup in the New Mexico wilderness. Also, the picnic table at the CDT southern terminus has been stolen – dragged across the Mexican border by unknown thieves. These stories, and hundreds more, are the currency of thru-hikers.

Four days ago, I’m at the backcountry permit office in Old Faithful Village, and the Yellowstone ranger tells me all the campsites along the CDT are reserved through the week. This is bad news, and I’m unsure how to proceed. I legally need a permit to cross the park, and the penalties are severe for camping without one. Should I wait a week? Should I skip this section?

During my sad negotiations with the ranger, two CDT thru-hikers – trailnames Grim and MeHap – enter the office to pickup their pre-reserved permit. Their itinerary through the park is ideal. It’s for six people, but they have space to add a seventh. Long story short, they offer to share, and – just like that – I agree to join a wilderness trek across Yellowstone with absolute strangers.

The complete group includes CDT hikers NomNom, Apache, Wanderer, Guy-On-A-Buffallo, Grim, and MeHap. To be inducted into their team, they decide I need to smell Grim’s socks. Expecting a foul stench, I reluctantly inhale a floral freshness recently laundered. Everyone laughs; it was a good joke.

Our crossing of southern Yellowstone is delightful. We soak in hot springs and swim in clear mountain lakes. The weather is all blue skies and warm days. On our final night in the park, we camp on the river peninsula at the confluence of the Heart and Snake rivers. We build a fire and stay up late laughing.

507 miles of hiking are behind me. At this point, I have the lungs of Jupiter and the legs of Mercury.

More than the PCT and the AT, the CDT offers seemingly countless alternative routes. Some alternates are more scenic than the official CDT. Others alternates are necessary for water and resupply. Following a lower-elevation alternate can be prudent when thunderstorms appear. Given the matrix of possibilities, it seems unlikely that any two thru-hikers follow exactly the same route. Perhaps this is one reason the CDT community has not established a thru-hiking speed record.

I am currently in the middle of an alternate route called the Big Sky Cutoff. Whereas the geographic divide goes west through the Anaconda-Pintler and Centennial Mountains, the Big Sky route goes east across the Tobacco Root Mountains, the Spanish Peaks, and the Gallatin Skyline, to rejoin the continental divide in Yellowstone National Park. The Big Sky route is about 150 miles shorter than the official CDT. It's arguably a non-canonical alternate, but it’s still many miles over rough terrain.

Crossing the Tobacco Root Mountains was a welcome change from the dry hills around Helena and Butte. The Tobacco Roots are relatively small in area, but they rise high with 43 peaks over 10,000 feet. This place is a “sky island” apart from the surrounding world.

The story of the American West has always defied a single narrative. It’s thousands of competing destinies carved into rock and dirt, with blood and sweat. Miners, loggers, ranchers, tribal communities, and new urban sprawl tenuously coexist on a patchwork of private and public land. This poly narrative is epitomized along the continental divide in central Montana. Pristine headwaters flow into river valleys spoiled by mine tailings. Old growth forests neighbor historic clear cuts overgrown with alder bush. Entire mountains have been transformed by wildfire, beetle blight, and the ceaseless trampling of cattle hooves.

Crossing the Helena National Forest along the CDT is typically a dry affair, with twenty miles between some water sources. Fortunately, the recent rain soaked these mountains and seasonal springs were flowing strong. Unfortunately, all the water is polluted by cattle. Cow dung is ubiquitous, even on seemingly impossible ridgetops. Water purification has been essential for my journey, and in some cases I both filtered and chemically treated water.