Day 48 (June 12, 2021)

815.4 to 826.1 (11.7 miles)

This day is hard to write about because it about broke me psychologically.

As you can see, the mileage was low. That is hard in itself because I had been doing low 20 mile days in New Mexico. It also meant I was below my planned average of 15 miles per day. Will I have enough food? I won’t starve but I better watch I have enough to keep energized.

Before I go all negative, I must say the views continue to be stunning. It is hard to describe. Absolutely beautiful.

Two major things contributed to the difficulties today.

First, at one point the trail reached the top of a ridge and then flowed with that ridge around a cirque to the opposite side of the valley. The first part of this is north facing and covered almost completely with snow with a steep slope. Several people had mentioned on Guthook that it was better to make your way down to another trail on the south facing slope of the valley that intersected the CDT. On looking, I agreed. The question was how to ‘get down’. Several before had giisaade down, but I was not willing because you could not see the full glissade path nor which chute would be the best. I chose to use another mapping app with good contour intervals to make my way down the southeast finger of the slope. Unfortunately this route pointed away from the CDT initially. Though I felt adventurous, I ran across footprints that showed others had a taken the same general route. It also meant dealing with blowdowns, occasional snowdrifts, and redirecting when it became too steep. And it meant more time not completing CDT mileage. (Side note: game paths were helpful, though they would fade away easily.) I got lucky toward the bottom. At the bottom of the valley was a small river that needed to be forded to reach the other trail. I was hoping to get to the river without a steep bank, which was too detailed to see on the topo map. As I approached the river I saw an easy way to ford the river early enough to adjust. Finding the other trail was easy and I followed it up the valley to get back on the CDT. Of importance for the next thing I talk about, once back on the CDT, I met a hiker I had met early on the CDT and his sister. (He had been off trail for a wedding and returned.)

The second big difficulty was a long snow covered traverse on a steep slope followed by a very steep short section. As I rounded a corner from a high flat area to see this, my heart sank. I was already behind because of the previous deviation. I made an initial attempt to start the traverse but post holed badly not far in and turned back. Dejected, I started to come up with a plan on the map to bail from the CDT down a valley to join a lower altitude alternate route. That had its own problem as I still would need to ration food. As I considered this plan along came the hiker I knew and his sister. They had experience with this from the PCT. Better yet, we could tackle this as a team. Strength in numbers. He surveyed the situation and we chose a slightly different traverse route that went a little lower initially. Going across as a group strengthened me and we successfully crossed the long traverse. The next short steeper section turned into a show. A group of five hikers had come up behind us waiting to see what we would do. First option was simply to traverse, but that included staying close to a cliff to avoid the steepest part. That is sketchy because a void usually forms at the snow-rock interface. Second was to glissade down to a grassy area and climb at an angle from there to the trail. The problem with this was we couldn’t see the initial part of the glissade path as it would be very steep. Third, we could go backwards some and descend quite a distance mostly snow free then climb back up farther down the trail. Again, we couldn’t see the bottom of the descent and the thought of giving up so much altitude just to climb back up wasn’t appealing. After my hiker friend climbed a little higher to take a look, we decided to glissade, with him assuring us that the initial steep part didn’t last long. As we prepared and he inched forward to start the glissade, he noticed a traverse path others had taken. We switched plans again and did the traverse, which was sketchy but doable. (The group behind us split up and did all three!)

I am very grateful for the support of my hiking friend and his sister. They were literally an answer to prayer as I had asked for guidance in what to do.

I found a campsite in a saddle not far after this section as I was physically and mentally exhausted. The others went a short distance beyond. The Southern San Juan Mountains are wearing me out.