2009 June

When we arrive at Bottle Creek campground, Pete remarks that it looks like “the Land of Mordor”. The surroundings are beautiful, but the campground has been clear cut to remove trees killed by pine beetles that could fall on campers. The entire region is peppered with brown trees fallen victim to beetles. Eventually it will burn or be logged, and the landscape will look completely different.

My dad and Sarah come from Indian Hills, Molly and Jay show up from Laramie, Kate comes from Fort Collins, Jim rides with us and takes our car back to Denver, and finally our pit crew Bob and Carol arrive from Nampa, Idaho. We thank everyone who made the journey to see us off!

Wyoming is the land of my birth, the source of scars, friends, habits, and fears. It’s a patch on the earth with nearly as many quarter sections as citizens, dappled by clean bright light and dark dreams. The same air that kisses the skin for an hour can flare into a wicked icy wind the next. In all ways, it’s a place whose kindnesses are unforgettably enhanced by its cruelties. I’ve never felt confident that it would allow me to traverse its wild expanse on foot, but I’ve always wanted to try.

The time has come to embark upon the realization of this fantasy once again. My chances are much improved by my walking companions, Ann and Pete, and RV support team Bob and Carol Fish (Ann’s parents). We’ve been making our plans for months. We may also find ourselves among the first northbound CDT thru-hikers who yearly cast themselves into the great plains to meet their fortunes, usually with far less support than we will have.

I am going to attempt to post some maps of our progress, but this is dependent on the sort of fragile human constructions that I know Wyoming can easily rip to shreds without harming our ability to travel. So don’t take the lack of information here as a sign of distress. Bob and Carol will be aware of our progress and our needs.

Thanks for following! I invite you to stop now and then and feel the love coming from The Equality State.

Near Santa Fe, NM

This a perfect refresher hike. A good climb, nice ridgewalk, fresh air.

This post is almost more significant than the hike – the first draft of the map was posted from my phone! It’s a precarious stack of home-rolled and bleeding-edge open source software that I balanced on to accomplish it, but I’m going to try to post some maps from the trail. There are too many potential failure points to promise anything, but I’ve proved it can work!

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Near Santa Fe, NM

We kind of expected this hike to be easy. That probably ensured that it would the hardest yet. The combination of heat, flies, monotonous trail, and unexpected difficulty finding the southern trailhead bruised our resolve. We hiked in opposite directions to avoid a two-car shuttle, and perhaps hiking alone made it harder too. Ann used a waist pack instead of her usual backpacking rig, and was already having back pain when I met her halfway. We figured after earning these miles we’d treat ourselves to dinner and drinks at Harry’s Roadhouse, which eases our suffering considerably. Too bad that won’t be an option after a hard day in the Great Basin!

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Release 1.2.6 is a collection of small fixes issues including some leftover strange category line behavior, the disappearance of tabs on the option page in WordPress 2.8, some wrong icons in the visible post list (issue 226), and future post info windows (issue 213).

Release 1.3alpha1 is a preview of some 1.3 features – see the brief documentation for more.

Remember there’s a solution now for protecting your custom files from automatic upgrades. See the upgrade considerations before upgrading Geo Mashup automatically. Of course the usual methods are fine too.

I’m going to be away during July, and not available for hire until August!

Near Santa Fe, NM

Ann did a backpack trip on her own starting Friday afternoon. During the night a heavy rainstorm moved in, and kept soaking her through the day today! She managed a nice 22-mile route with about 6,000 feet of climbing over the crest of the Sangre Cristo mountains regardless, and caught a ride home with some other soaked hikers.

Near Santa Fe, NM

Ann pours on the steam today, climbing Atalaya like a machine. Apparently all of our hiking has had some effect. She is ahead of me in preparations for our Wyoming hike as well. I decide that I may have to skip our weekend hike to catch up, and we discuss alternatives she might do without me.

There’s a desert stretch of the Continental Divide Trail I’d like to map, and we figure it will be a good way to test ourselves and our gear in some hot, waterless terrain. The forecast is for sun and wind, but clouds and occasional rain storms spare us from the heat. Many cactus are beginning to bloom, and a great variety of alien-looking insects are going about their business (which, mercifully, does not seem to be sucking our blood). We camp at Los Indios springs, where a chorus of frogs sing us to sleep and flitting hummingbirds bathe in the morning.

It’s good we chose to test the gear. Our platypus water reservoirs are old and difficult to seal, and Ann’s has a slow leak. We can get by on this trip, but we’ll need to replace them for the Great Basin.

It’s a little late in the season for northbound through-hikers, but we see some fresh tracks the first day and find a hat on the trail with a name and phone number written on the tag. As we leave the spring on Sunday we meet three hikers: Loed, Sawbuck, and T2. It seems they’ve lost time to the difficult navigation in New Mexico. Even with a GPS receiver, they spent eight days on a four-day segment – two without food. I know that eventually gadgets will take some of this adventure out of the New Mexico trail, but it seems the trail still demands a certain amount of skill that it will gladly teach you the hard way. They also say temperatures have regularly exceeded 100°F, and they have the tanned hide to prove it. Despite their difficulties, they have the easygoing nature of seasoned distance hikers. They sit and chat with us twice rather than go for water, laugh about their troubles, rave about the scenery here and the other hikers they’ve met, and talk with anticipation about the trail to come. If we have hard lessons coming our way, I hope we end up smiling like these guys.

It’s been a busy week, and we’ve lost some of our hiking momentum. We also have a lot of preparations to do for our July hike, like buying dehydrated food. We combine our two needs and muster a hike to Wild Oats with empty backpacks, which we fill with bulk bags.

Our minds have also been occupied with a tragic failed helicopter rescue in the same area we hiked through last weekend. It’s a strange, sad story, and the way it was discovered didn’t make much sense during the week. Now the facts are starting to converge, but there are still a lot questions lingering (for us, anyway). Mostly though, we can’t help but vividly envision the scenario in a place we just left.

In less weighty news, our blooming neighborhood agave has sprouted a bit a the top of it’s stalk:

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Near Glorieta, NM

The forecast calls for warm weather, so we decide to risk another hike in the high country. This time we drive to the trailhead after work on Friday, with a couple of hours of light to get us started. I love hiking at twilight, but it doesn’t leave much time to find a campsite. After some wandering around Nambé creek we find one tiny spot under a big Engelman Spruce and snuggle in.

The morning is chilly and breezy. The breeze turns to an icy wind as we ascend. When we reach the ridge, it’s hard to stay upright. We make the summit along with a couple of other hikers, but we’re not inspired to spend much time there. Instead we continue along the ridge, and as we descend toward the melting Lake Katherine the wind becomes more tolerable. There’s a steep meadow to contend with, then a nice lunch break at the lake. Clouds race by above, ice melts into emerald green water below.

We lose the trail in snow below the lake, but find it again before too long. On this side the trail descends in big, mellow switchbacks that seem to go on and on. By the time we reach Spirit Lake we’re ready for an early dinner. I’m experimenting with stoveless meals. Ann had the idea that it might be more practical to eat cereal for dinner, then soak a bean soup or other dehydrated meal overnight for breakfast. It may just work.

Crazy gusts of wind start up from all directions. When the hail pellets start falling, we hastily pack up, making a mockery of donning a poncho. I’m fortunate the rain lets up a bit, so I can turn mine right side out.

We loop back to the nice meadows at Puerto Nambé to camp. The rain has let up, but we practice our drill for pitching the tent in the rain anyway. The key will be to assemble the poles first, we decide. When the tent is pitched I’m satisfied, but hopeful we don’t have to put this method to use too often.

Our final morning is the coldest yet. We’re short on water, but decide to go for the four mile route to the Santa Fe Basin ski area on what we have. The wind is really frigid today, and we encounter frozen snowdrifts that convince us to leave the trail. We wend our way up toward treeline, crossing drifts as infrequently as possible in our Chaco sandals. The bare ridge is a welcome sight when we reach it, but the wind is merciless. I don my poncho again for a windbreaker.

Once again we spend only a few moments on the summits of Penitente and Lake Peak. We don’t warm up until we’re well below treeline in the ski area, where a rock and water provide a warm sunny haven. The wind slowly becomes less intense as we make the final descent, but we haven’t completely forgotten it until we’re in the car where the sun can warm us without interference.

More mappiness at EveryTrail.