Day 6 in the Bob

I’m starting today at mile 2775. 

I woke up and had to walk by the horses to use the outhouse. There were only two. I thought I had seen four the night before. One whinnied at me. They had whinnied throughout the night, waking me up. Because of that and all the pain in every part of my body, I slept in and didn’t start hiking until 7. 

The trail started out clear of obstacles  and gently but persistently climbing. I started to cry. It was the first random crying I had done for several days. I don’t know really why. I had been thinking about doing things with my life, having a retirement career perhaps. I think I was crying from the pent up emotions from the job I just retired from. It is hard to explain but I felt put in a box and left to rot. Too old to be of use, to be given opportunities. I don’t really know because there was nothing in my thoughts really. The tears just came. 

Soon a vista opened up and the trail became snowy. The Chinese Wall appeared. So much snow on it and below and on the mountains surrounding. This would prove to be a difficult day. 

I stopped to take a picture at Moose lake and a man appeared. He sounded French. He was hiking the CDT, the first CDT hiker I had seen in many days. Then he just disappeared into the snow as if he never really had been there. 

I struggled in the snow trying to follow footprints that would disappear. I stopped often to check FarOut but it would take sometimes two or more minutes for the GPS to locate me. I would reorient myself to the trail and stumble onward. 

The trail did the same thing it did before, going over a nose of the wall on a little high pass, then traversing a bowl until the next nose. I walked on solid snow for almost the entire day. 

As mid day came and passed the snow became softer and I would posthole up to my knee at times. Sometimes the trail would appear and I would slip in the mud. At one point I managed one mile in an hour and a half.

Throughout the day I would sometimes hear voices. Or maybe they were hallucinations. I never saw the people. I followed footprints and never met their owners. As the snow melted I stopped being able to see the imprints of trad or micro spikes in the footprints. The imprints of trekking poles lasted longer. I realized the trail community was a community of ghosts. People running away, passing me, always ahead, always out of reach. My slow pace would keep me isolated. 

In the afternoon I met several groups of backpackers out for the holiday weekend, all headed northbound while I was headed south. It was good to see people. One of them said it was quite an achievement to have done all this alone. I did not feel achieved. I felt clumsy and incompetent. 

As the snow was dissipating in my dissent and my crampons were put away, leaving me to stumble and posthole and slip on mud, I heard a whoop behind me. I turned to see obvious thruhikers confidently striding toward me looking strong and vital. I got out my camera to video this remarkable thing that I very much was not. And then I recognized them. They were the hikers from Luna’s. I knew them. One of them was Van Gogh. He gave me a big hug. He said he thought about me often over the last few days, thought about me being alone out here, wondering if I was scared. He was amazed I had done this all alone. They all felt this way. That they could not have hiked alone like I just did. 

They all wondered if I was scared. I really have not felt scared. I have felt lonely and clumsy and weak and slow and old. 

They had all done the shorter alternate. They had had blowdowns to deal with too. There was one woman in the group who now was trail named Rip because everything she had had torn in the blowdowns. Her legs looked worse than mine. Everyone was planning to go in to Augusta because they had so much shopping to do to replace torn and broken things. 

These are my legs. Those are bruises not dirt. 

They were all aimed toward the same campsite I had decided on. Earlier I decided that at a mile an hour I could reach this campsite by 7 pm and get my 15 miles in. Now I would be camping with a big group of friends. 

At least for one night anyway. 

We ate dinner together around a campfire. I heard a few sprinkles on my tarp. One of the men had a weather report on his phone that said it would rain the next few days. I would be at Benchmark for one of them so that should be okay. 

Hiking the CDT SOBO is like starting the PCT in the Sierras in a high snow year. No 700 miles of desert to ease you in. You’re just thrown into the snow and the blowdowns immediately. And then while you’re struggling in the fire and ice it rains like it’s Washington.