Solvitur Ambulando

Melissa and I got snowed off the Colorado Trail on Friday, about 200 miles into our hike. We were adequately prepared for the weather, but walking through a foot or more of snow was impossibly slow; it was decided that we wouldn’t have enough food to make it to Salida, our next resupply stop, so we retreated to lower elevations as quickly as possible.

We could’ve waited around for the snow to melt, or improvised a lower-level route like many Continental Divide Trail hikers are doing (the two trails are roughly the same through much of Colorado), but we decided we’d had enough. The prospect of hitchhiking from Salida all the way back to Denver on Saturday was daunting, but we were incredibly lucky and managed it with just two hitches.

So we picked up the Jeep from storage and stopped at a Starbucks to browse Craigslist for housing opportunities…by Sunday morning, we’d settled in at our new housesitting gig on the north side of Fort Collins. The transition from hiking to everyday life has been incredibly jarring, but we’re already looking for jobs and trying to ease back toward normalcy.

Anyway, here are our pictures:

http://eric.trailfaqs.com/photos/ct/

We had camera problems early on, when we got caught in an intense thunderstorm, but everything seemed to work once the camera dried out except the LCD screen, which remains very dim. Still, we took some very nice photos that we’re both proud of.

So this ends our adventuring, at least for now. If you’d like to stay abreast of what we’re up to, I’ll be posting infrequently to my journal.

My apologies for such a long delay in writing. Melissa and I had a
great time on our bicycle tour of the northern Netherlands…see our
photos here:

http://eric.trailfaqs.com/photos/europe/netherlands/

After a whirlwind tour of the traditional kolsch and altbier brewpubs
in Cologne and Dusseldorf, an evening in a cozy London pub drinking
real ale and playing Scrabble, and a crazy day of travel involving
ridiculous security at Heathrow and a missed connection in Montreal,
we finally arrived back in the States. I spent the next few days
visiting the Lake Erie Islands and Cedar Point with my friends Cory
and Chris, then the next few weeks at my father’s place in Indiana
looking for a used Jeep Cherokee. After spending countless hours
online, making numerous phone calls, and crisscrossing the state to
actually look at the vehicles, we finally found one that was suitable.

The car search took much longer than we thought, but we hoped that
we’d still be able to drive out to Colorado in time and hike the
Colorado Trail before winter set in. So we loaded up our new Jeep and
headed west at 75 miles an hour, spending a night near Kansas City
with our hiking friend Chino on the way to Denver. We arrived early in
the afternoon, made a quick trip to the library to make photocopies
from the CT guidebook, put the Jeep into storage, had a nice dinner,
bought a short story anthology to read on the trail, and then took an
overnight bus to Durango.

The trail has been amazing so far, but it’s been surprisingly cold and
windy. Most hikers start in Denver to ease their way into the hike,
but we tackled the mountains head-on to give us a better chance of
finishing the entire trail. We both suffered from some minor altitude
sickness after spending our first three nights at 8500′, 10600′, and
11400′, but most of that is behind us now. We hope to finish the
remaining 340 miles over the next 3 weeks, retrieve our car from
storage, and start our new lives in the Fort Collins area, about an
hour north of Denver and Boulder.

Again, sorry for the long delay…keep an eye out for our amazing
Colorado pictures!