Well, we finished the trail a bit quicker than we'd ever expected of ourselves. It was fun in that regard, we liked to challenge ourselves to about 20 miles a day yet we still got to camp pretty early & were able to enjoy our evenings preparing & having dinner, reading, journaling, and playing Hive Pocket just so Keith could win for the millionth time! It became a routine that we very much enjoyed & we will miss immensely because of it's simplicity.
We were glad to have met a few fellow CT'ers who had come up from behind us; Beans (not to be confused with our good friend Beans from the AT) & his dog Chili we met in Lake City briefly at the library & ran into again in between Lake City & Silverton. He had told us about two guys from Denmark, Heartbeat & Top Gun, who were just behind as well but we didn't get the privilege to meet them officially until Silverton when we ran into all of them at once. But we were able to finish the trail with these guys & it gave us that camaraderie that we'd been missing from most of the rest of the trail. This was a unique trail for us in that we didn't meet a ton of people going the same way as us, we were earlier than most & cruising quickly enough that most people weren't going the same pace as us. We spent our last two evenings camped near these guys & it's amazing to think that that's really all the time we spent getting to know them because you leave feeling like you've been comrades forever. That's part of the beauty of the trail. We hope to see them again, as they will all be in the Boulder area for a bit at least.
We stretched out the last part of the trail & enjoyed taking our time to finish. We could've easily walked into Durango on the evening of the 16th (& it was tempting due to the hot hot heat as we entered lower elevation) but decided to stay one more night out to enjoy the bottom of Junction Creek as well as the company of our new friends. The trail between Silverton & Durango was fantastic - it felt like a grand finale. It was dramatic, beautiful, surprised us with some AMAZING waterfalls, as well as wonderful views as we walked farther and farther into the San Juan's. It was breathtaking. The final ridge-walk of the Indian Trail Ridge with a view of the Sharkstooth Range gave us one last taste of the high elevation, 360-degree views, marmots, and the wind-whipping us around, beating us up a little bit. Then we were dropped down to Taylor Lake, which was one of my favorite spots probably on the trail. Surrounded by the jagged peaks in the distance & the diverse peaks all around us felt like a gift as we contemplated our finish and what life would be like again off the trail. We met some bikers who were out on their second night in an attempt to thru-bike the trail from the south to the north.
The next day, I saw what I believed to be a mountain lion track, freshest track on the trail, a perfect beautiful track in soft sand...but of course the picture does no justice to it. I remembered three lobs on the bottom & one lobe on the top, though, which (since I did not have my scat tracking book with me), now tells me that is a dog, not a cat. So now I suspect it was probably a coyote...but if so, a very large coyote! There were no fresh human tracks that morning so I was sure it was wild, whatever it was. Still, it was a beautiful track nonetheless.
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| Ugh, to see this in real life was so much better! |
My father & brother Caleb were kind enough to again come all the way over to the southwest corner of Colorado to pick us up from Durango. Once again, we tried to squeeze in as much as we could in as little time as possible as my dad had to begin heading back to Illinois the next morning, so it made for some late-night driving, but yet again, he pulled it off with all of us safe & sound. We had planned on hitchhiking our way back home originally, so it was nice that we were instead able to arrive home in one fell swoop, in the company of our family.
We are now home, enjoying the comforts we've missed while on the trail. We were so pleased to come home & find our cats happy & healthy & our house so well taken care of by our house/cat sitter. First thing we did is stock up on fresh fruit & vegetables. Our first dinner home was pulling the last 4 pierogies from the freezer Keith had cooked from scratch the night before we had left for this adventure and oh myyy, they were even better than I remembered!
We are happy to be home for now & happy to continue to grow & evolve through our life's experiences and travels. We feel, this is part of what our life's all about. Where to next? We shall see.......!
Here are some more photos from our Colorado Trail experience:
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| What is this, the AT or somethin'? |
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| A Colorado Trail blaze getting swallowed by a tree |
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| Georgia Pass |
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| Our most tiring day of walking through snow, on the west side of Georgia Pass |
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| The Ten-Mile Range, where we were headed after Breckenridge looks a wee-bit snowy |
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| Very friendly & kind owners of Fireside Inn in Breckenridge |
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| Atop the Ten-Mile Range, storms were forming |
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| Part of the trail where the CT and the CDT coincide |
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| Had a few opportunities to glissade down a few snowy parts |
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| Old bunkers in a valley where there was an old WWII training camp |
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| More snow! |
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| The good kind of yellow snow - where we put lemon Mio into it to make a snow cone!! Yum! We call it a limoncello (must say that with an Italian accent, of course.) |
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| Lovely aspen forest |
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| Twin Lakes |
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| Walking under the road just before Twin Lakes |
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| The amazing 1970's Jeep we were lent by Charles in Leadville |
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| Amazing clouds |
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| Our friends Puffy & Thermal Mass |
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| Unicroc practicing protecting himself from predatory birds |
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| Our future house? |
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| A (thankfully easily) avoidable cornice the trail took right over |
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| Since we were walking through old cow pasture, perhaps this was a cow? |
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| Catching some hail to snack on |
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| We took the hard crossing on this one....but we made it by holding on for dear life onto that bush! |
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| Walking through flat farmland for a while |
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| Ground squirrel atop a pole |
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| Herds of cows we were about to walk through |
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| Stopping to soak in the views after climbing down some from the top of San Luis Mountain |
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| Nearing Snow Mesa |
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| Walking atop Snow Mesa |
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| A herd of elk in the distance |
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| Hard to see but in the snow back there there is a short train track leading back to an old mine |
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| Climbing down toward the Animas River |
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| The mother moose again |
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| Campsite on the Animas River (of which we did not drink the water) - Uni had already written Silverton on our tent footprint to use as a sign to hitch into town the next morning |
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| Climbing up toward Molas Pass from the Animas River early in the morning |
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| Chili dog is a very chill dog |
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| Smoky view of a wildfire down to the south somewhere from Silverton |
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| Uni washing his head |
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| Didn't see this waterfall coming, was so beautiful |
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| Salamanders with a weird beard-thing |
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| Crossing the Indian Trail Ridge with Sharkstooth Range in the background |
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| Clay bottom of Taylor Lake |
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| 20 miles to go! |
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| Another beautiful, unexpected falls |
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| Final camp with Beans & Chili and Heartbeat & Top Gun |
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| We're finished! But not ready to be done walking yet.....so we walked 5 more miles into town :) |
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| Enjoying our free Colorado Trail Nut Brown Ale from Carver's Pub in Durango |
Much love,
Scat Tracker & Unicroc
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