The Colorado Trail, FS-560 to McCurdy Creek

I did it!  I got back on the horse and spent a night on the trail by myself and I found my cache from my CT attempt last year, which was hidden between two pine trees about sixty feet from the trailhead at FS-560. I completely forgot about it, but Glenn's been asking after his ammo can. Glad I found it, because I had not idea where it could've been.

The trip was a total of 17.8 miles round trip, 2,440 feet of vertical (2,180 on the first day) - every step of it hard-fought ground; I am extremely out of shape. The Colorado Trail is really lovely in this segment - a peaceful walk through an almost ethereal forest until the trees thinned out into a vast green valley.  I encountered only two hikers - the rest of the time was just me, and the occasional black squirrel which chittered loudly at me any time I got too close.

I had the daylight and the energy to go further when I reached my destination, McCurdy Creek, but it was so pretty and peaceful that I decided to set up camp anyway, within a grove of trees with the burbling of the brook just within hearing.  Instead I read my novel until I lost the light.

Despite the temperate weather during the day, the night got cold.  Even with a sleeping bag, a liner, an emergency bivvy, and three layers of clothes, I shivered through the night.  I really really want a new sleeping bag, but since my camping season is practically up, I'll save the expense for next year.

I think I figured out where I strayed last year. The Colorado Trail in this particular half of this particular segment weaves in and out of an old forest road; at the time of year I was hiking, there were snow drifts everywhere, and I believe that the place where I strayed from the trail was at one of those junctures - however, there was a snow drift covering the juncture with actual trail so I continued along the road instead.  I had absolutely no trouble this time, and now I know to take a second look at snow drifts when I think the trail has gone cold.

The forest was rich with fungi, this Mario-esque red one being my favorite.  I've got pictures of a dozen different mushrooms I spotted, from big brown pancake ones that were a foot across to tiny white buttons that were smaller than my pinkie nail.  I'm going to see if there's a mushroom-spotter's guide the way there are birdwatching ones - it'd be cool trivia to know which of them I can eat and which are poisonous.

A Personal Entry

Tomorrow, I'm doing a few miles along the Colorado Trail, west from the FS-560 trailhead to the point where it intersects with the branch of the Brooks-McCurdy Trail that leads to Lost Park Campground, about 9 miles. I've got (three) maps and my compass, I've walked myself step-by-step through my day to make sure I have everything packed that I'll need, and it's a really well-worn popular trail so it's not like I'm bushwacking in the wilderness - but to be completely honest, I'm terrified.

I haven't done a lot of backpacking lately (in fact, none at all this year, I think), and publicly I'll say that it's because between work and school, I have no time to disappear for even a quick overnight, but I have to admit, I never got over the experience of losing my way when I attempted a portion of the CT last year. I lost the trail and had to turn back; luckily I was near a popular campground in a familiar area and managed to hitch my way back home after only a few miles of road-walking, but it was completely humiliating and shook my confidence to the core.

There's a Daniel Boone quote that goes, "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks."  But still, what if I hadn't been in such a convenient position, where I was a short walk from other humans, where I had ample water, where I knew where I was on the map, even if I didn't know where to go next? What if I was really and truly lost? I could've wandered out there until I died. After I got home, my dad told me a story about how he got lost hiking once - really lost, not just confused - and how it turned him off hiking for the rest of his life; he said that he didn't want that to happen to me, and I don't want it to either, but I don't know how to get rid of this knot of fear in my stomach.

Except by getting back on the horse.

Picketwire Canyon, Colorado

In the 19th century, a group of Spanish explorers died exploring the canyonlands in southeast Colorado; because there were no priests in the party to perform final rites on the doomed men, the river they died near came to be known as el Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio - which was shortened to simply Purgatoire River by French explorers who came to the area years after. Local accents bastardized the French word into Picketwire, and that is how Picketwire Canyon is still known today.

We weren't able to finish the entire 17.4-mile hike, but we did enjoy the best parts of the canyon. A group of geologist cyclists were kind enough to point us toward some pictographs carved into some boulders about a mile or two into the hike, and we made it as far as the dinosaur tracks before turning back.

Valentine's Day Sky-Diving

I spent all this morning psyching myself up for the jump. I'm normally a brave person, but the idea of jumping out of a plane had me rattled. With skydiving, you have a lot of time between realizing that you're gonna be painting the ground red and it actually happening. But, as I repeated to myself, the odds were for me, and even though it wouldn't be a pleasant way to die, it would definitely be an impressive one (imagine the obituary!).  So I was feeling pretty confident - even cocky - as I zipped into a speedsuit and my jump-partner, Randy of Out of the Blue Skydiving, tightened my harness.

The six of us (Dean and I, our jump-partners, and our cameramen) were squeezed inside this tiny little propellor plane before I remembered - I'm terrified of flying.  I'm an atheist, but you know that saying, there are no atheists in foxholes.  Flying is spitting in God's face; that metal tube is really just a giant middle finger to an omnipotent and vengeful deity; if humans were meant to fly, we'd have been born with wings!  And on and on.  Given the options between jumping out of the plane and staying in the plane, suddenly jumping out didn't seem like such a bad idea.

And it wasn't.  Skydiving is wonderful, and I would do it again in a heartbeat if I had the money.  The first few seconds are admittedly terrible - that roller-coaster feeling of your stomach hitting your throat cranked up to eleven - but then you hit freefall and you feel like you're flying instead of falling!  It ended way too quickly, just as I was really getting into it and wondering if Randy would hear me if I asked him to flip us over or something, the chute popped - far more gently than I would've predicted - and we were floating down to earth.

Penrose Airport from 5,000 feet in the air

Here's the exciting part; I could tell something was wrong after the chute popped because Randy was shifting and twisting an awful lot.  Then suddenly we started falling again.  I learned later that our first chute had malfunctioned - the lines were seriously tangled and it would prevent us from landing safely.  Randy had to eject that chute (hence the second fall!) and pop the back-up chute, during which we fell another 1,500 feet. We ended up landing safely (on our feet even), and everyone kept teasing me by telling me how lucky I was that I got two rides for the price of one!

People keep asking if I was scared.  Honestly, I wasn't.  It all happened too quickly for me emotionally react; I was aware what was going on, but it was like my neurotransmitters hadn't caught up to it.  Mainly I was thinking, "Of course this would happen to me."  By the time I was able to think things through, I was safely on the ground, and then there was no point in panicking.  In the end, I was pretty happy that I had such a good story to tell my friends later.  I asked Randy how many times this had happened to him before, and he said 26 times in his 5700 jumps!