Project Eveningland

7/29/2023 Saturday

The morning cool was perfectly comfortable at my 12K elevation campsite near Willow Creek. I got an actual, honest-to-goodness, voluntary early start. I spent my pleasant morning in a valley full of massive mountains surrounded by valleys full of other massive mountains. It’s just endless. Totally endless.

Hold on, I’m not done talking about endlessness. How can there even be enough names for all these mountains?!

There were two noticeable climbs in the morning: a half-mile 500-foot ascent, and an even gentler 1300-foot climb spread out over three miles. The second climb led me to the beginning of Snow Mesa, or what I saw called “Misery Mesa” in the comments in the navigation app. That same commenter called the four preceding climbs the “Four Horsemen.” I took that person for someone who likes dramatic names for stuff. Come to think of it, I like dramatic names for stuff.

After consulting the map, and taking into account recent rainfall, I decided it was safe to wait for the last water source to refill before the long, dry-ish mesa walk. When I got there it was bone dry! Shit! I had half a liter on me and had hydrated well that morning, but four miles is a long way on half a liter. Especially on this tread which, while not Rocksylvania, is lumpy and narrow. For AT familiars: it’s like the climb up Big Hump in Roan Mountain, TN.

Snow Mesa is something to see: a high, exposed, grassy expanse with incredible views. It looks very Sound of Music, including wildflowers and tiny patches of remaining snow. I stopped briefly to mentor some Austrian children with a deceased mother and a rigid-but-loving military father. Always with the singing! Very irritating, although we did see eye-to-eye on brown paper packages tied up with string.

So, it looks Sound of Music from far away, but what about up close? Up close the mesa is still beautiful, but also something to contend with. The mesa walk was maybe eight miles long. That’s plenty of exposure—I think I walked ten miles without any cover. The water problem resolved itself. I was able to find a tiny dribble of fresh snowmelt coming down some rocks two miles in. It required a scoop and much patience, but I wound up with a liter of fresh, cold water. It tasted like a bracing spring wind.

The app has been a disappointment to me on this hike. It was a mistake to leave behind my “databook” (a compressed version of the full Colorado Trail guidebook that’s lighter weight and has waterproof pages). The app doesn’t show where tree line is and there are no campsites listed for the entire trail, so I’ve been forced to wing it.

And then a simple solution came to me. When I reached a trailhead with people at it (at the end of the day), I borrowed Julia’s copy of the databook, took out my phone, and photographed the pages for the last seven sections. The databook lists a few campsites but not many in these sections.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The sweeping curves of the mesa sometimes made the path ahead visible for miles. Beautiful but demoralizing when you’re having a tired day, which I definitely am. I spent the afternoon dodging thunderstorms across the mesa, though I seemed to catch a small clear window later in the day and never heard thunder or had to take shelter.

My face got sunburned. I forgot to reapply my sunscreen, and I’m running out anyway. The miles seemed exceptionally long. My ankles are sore from the uneven tread. I came into Spring Creek Pass feeling pretty low, though having done 13 miles before 3PM was a consolation. And there were trail angels with food at the trailhead!

Sam and his grandson Gabe, two hospitable Texans, were giving out burgers and doing all manner of other favors. Sam left to shuttle a young woman into Lake City and Gabe—18, very intelligent, good dude—chatted with me and invited other hikers over to eat. I ate two cheeseburgers. Then later a third. If I had been feeling my feelings in that moment I’m sure I would have cried, but I was still mesa-shocked. I decided to camp at the trailhead with the trail angels and others—there was an old, decaying little campground adjacent to the parking lot that Sam and Gabe had posted up in.

I am back on the fence about going into Lake City—what’s the rush, you know? On the other hand, I want to get home. It’s lovely that I get to decide about town in the morning (there’s a daily shuttle). I don’t need to go because I got a battery re-charge from Sam, and that had been my main concern about this eight-day supply carry. Town or no, I should be good to go to Molas in four days.

Another wonderful thing: my “Oops All Bars”-style compact food carry has served me reasonably well, especially now that I’m eating in smaller portions.

In between the second and third cheeseburgers, Sam and Gabe drove their very Texas-sized truck up to a high point four miles away to try to get phone signal. I rode along and got three bars, but it was illusory. No data. Not even a text. They got a shaky phone call through. Sigh, I wanna listen to those fucking podcasts! I am in news withdrawal!

I felt rusty in social situations today. Lost my train of thought. As I write this, I’m sitting in my tent watching the orange sunset light reflect against the mountains. There’s an old picnic table. I can hear the others chatting over s’mores. Julia is camped nearby (she’s a slight German flight attendant with a dignified carriage but something of a fearful affect—more on that in another entry). There’s a pair of women nearby sleeping in an SUV with a rooftop tent.

A young couple came back from town and decided to stay here too. Bec and Trevor (trailnames Goldilocks and Poyito, spelling uncertain). They’re a pair of young educators who seemed very woke in the way that education folks sometimes are—I use the descriptor affectionately. Bec struck me as fussy in the same way that I am, which makes me think she’s probably no stranger to anxiety. They were open and authentic people. It would be difficult not to root for them. Having just returned from Lake City seven miles away, Bec wanted to get a few more miles in before calling it a day. However, it’s no small thing to walk away from having a toilet in the morning (trailhead privy) and trail angels, who have a tendency to cook bacon or similar in the morning. Trevor, a rail thin blond man, looks not unlike a young handsome version of the the police sketch of the Blind River Killer. Tracy, don’t call the tip line just yet—Trevor probably hadn’t been born at the time of that murder. Anyway, as Bec is talking about how they have to move on, Trevor’s whole body deflates, and he says, in the manner of a teenager, unable to hold back, “but why are we leaving this place tonight?” Bec relented. I would have relented.

Nathan, a quiet young guy arrived before dark. He had pushed hard for ten miles to get here on news of cheeseburgers but left right after eating. Painfully shy, he seemed happy to be there, happy to be hiking. I said, as he was packing up, that I could feel the universe rejoicing that he had indeed gotten his cheeseburger after such heroic effort. He was five days into his northbound walk, already 130 miles from his start point. Nathan is a part of a stream of hikers that pass unseen in the night. You have to lure them in with food. No sudden movements.

One thing I fantasized about today: being warm and dry in our house during snow or rain. There was so much time to think on that mesa.

People keep saying the next part of the trail is the prettiest. I wish someone’d say it was the easiest! Cool winds came as the light died.