Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  Lunch was drying time for tent and sleeping bag. Descending to the emerald-green valley of the Rio Antonio gave me a lovely resting place to eat dinner and treat water before heading up the Mesa, climbing the edge of the escarpment on a long gradual slant overlooking the Rio Antonio drainage. Lovely.

  As I neared the top, the wind picked up, buffeting me around as I walked an edge with a drop of hundreds of feet. Fortunately, the wind was blowing me into the mountain, not trying to pluck me off of it.

  Three deer showed themselves to say hello just as I was ready to stop and watch a glorious sunset. Funny isn’t it, one day I could feel tired of hiking, and the next beautiful day I felt like walking forever.

  I lay in bed watching the sky change colors in the early morning light through the large door of my Hexamid tent, perfectly made for lying down and looking out. I packed up and immediately felt like I needed a nap. Good thing there was only one remaining full day on the trail. I was accumulating tiredness.

  Altitude may have been a factor. Most of the day was above 10,000 feet as I progressed at a crawl, struggling up Brazos Ridge. From its top, snowcapped mountains of the San Juans showed to the north in Colorado. A thru hiker might not have been quite so excited to see the snow. But I wouldn’t be heading into those mountains until late summer. I could just enjoy the view and anticipate the joys to come at a later date, snow melted and gone.

  The wind tried to blow me away all day. Not able to decide on its direction, it blew a dust cloud at me from one direction and 30 seconds later blew another from the opposite side. On Osier Mesa I walked into head wind, very tiring, both physically and mentally.

  In the evening, as I was getting my last bottle of water from a stream, a local couple from Chama stopped to see if I was OK. New Mexico has such nice people.

  After I headed away from the road, two elk and I had a stare down for long moments. The elk won the stare down, as I moved first, and the elk bounded off into the woods. That night, tucked into a sheltered spot with no snags or severely swaying trees nearby, I listened to the wind blow hard in the trees around me. Snow banks within feet of my tent promised a cold night.

  I slept warmly, though it was 37 in the morning and miraculously, my hands didn’t seem too cold packing up. Then came trouble.

  I knew there might be a problem when I saw so much snow near my tent. I was positive I was on the trail when I began that last morning. But before long—after one lone, obscure scrap of red surveyor tape at the start of newish looking trail from the road—I was in a pile of snow banks and a forest of blowdowns with no sign of CDT markers. The trail was in the map book, and I had the route on my GPS. I did some cross-country following the GPS. Unfortunately the trail wasn’t always where the GPS said it was. Eventually I found it at the 11,000-foot-high point. Snow and downed trees made it hard to follow trail, easily disguising switchback turns under snow banks or jumbles of tree branches on the ground, and I had snow and downed trees all morning.

  I was obviously the first hiker to have taken the trail instead of the road. There were no footprints in snow except for mine and the elk. What's with those young macho hiker dudes who were ahead of me? They took the road; the 70-year-old grandma opened the trail. I thought that was pretty funny. But they were smarter to take the road and avoid the headache I’d chosen. It made for a more difficult start to the day than planned, though I didn’t get misplaced after the first wandering confusion, even walking through many more snow banks and through, around and under many more downed trees.

  Tracks left in mud appeared to have lasted all winter. Several times I saw muddy tire tracks on the road leading to and away from 3-foot-high, 10-foot-long, and 20-foot-wide snow banks completely covering any drivable surface. The tracks emerged on the other side out of the snow banks. I also saw some fine bear tracks in the mud and snow. Bear tracks in the mud could have been very old, like the tire tracks. Bear tracks in the snow must have been fresh.

  The afternoon went much more smoothly than the morning as I reached the Colorado border amid clusters of bright blue Chiming Bells waving good-bye to New Mexico. The view from the ridge looking down on Cumbres Pass was spectacular. The Colorado Chamber of Commerce should use that shot in early spring for their slogan. “Colorful Colorado.” It was all so green. I gazed out to a beautiful green valley, a blue lake, mountains all around and the San Juan's white snow enticing me to come back in August.

  My last trial (not misspelled) was walking an open ridge leading to Cumbres Pass, a wind tunnel between two masses of mountain. The wind was so strong, I almost couldn’t walk forward at all. I could barely stand up. Putting my head down and leaning into the wind, looking only at my feet, I struggled not to be blown over sideways. Fortunately, it was a short ridge.

  About 15 minutes after I arrived at Cumbres Pass, Kevin, sent by Jan, arrived to drive me back to Albuquerque. I had not walked all of New Mexico. More miles awaited for the next year. But 521.6 miles of New Mexico made a very memorable spring hike on the CDT.

  “It depends”

  Almost any question about the CDT could be answered: "It depends." That is: there are not many cut-and-dried answers. The CDT was more free form than the AT or PCT.

  There were choices of where to start and which route to take, multiple possibilities all along the trail. My speed was quite variable, too. How long would it take to hike from point A to point B? Would it be on road or trail, at what elevation gain? Would it be cross-country where you can see your destination? Or would cross-country mean dealing with steep hillsides, snow, or downed trees? Young hiker dudes can whip out 20-to-30-mile days easily, some older ones, too. I couldn't. Speed and distance depended on the trail, and it also depended on the person hiking.

  Was the trail well marked? I chose the Columbus route for ease of access and small historical rewards. In that era, almost half of the CDT thru hikers chose similarly. I didn’t see a CDT sign for many days. But I was never really lost—between Wolf's descriptions, Ley's maps, and my GPS.

  I couldn’t have walked this hike without a GPS. I can read a map, but my compass skills are barely adequate. However, I learned how to program a GPS route and follow the bright magenta line. I would argue that map and compass are limited to telling what direction you are headed, and along with the contour lines and place names on the map, your approximate location. But if you are not clearly on a named place on the map, and you can’t sight on three known points for triangulation, you do not always know your exact location.

  With the GPS, I always knew where I was within a hundred feet. Breakage or battery loss could render the GPS useless, but a compass could break, too. For me, GPS plus map was the best combination, and I was able to have a constant reference to the GPS with batteries fresh from my solar charger in sunny New Mexico.

  There were times the trail seemed a figment of someone's imagination, with all sources, Wolf, Ley and CDTA map book. On the other hand, this trail wasn’t too hard for a 70-year-old grandmother traveling alone, as long as she kept her wits about her and her map and GPS at hand. I didn’t make every turn correctly. And I did lose the trail, but I could always find it again. I was prepared for sometimes poorly marked trail, but I didn’t let that scare me unnecessarily. I had the tools to help me find my way and had practiced using them before I set foot on the CDT.

  In New Mexico 3/4 of the trail was some kind of road, from sections of blacktop to a track so faint I could barely follow. Roads could be rocky and steep or flat and well-graded. Country dirt roads made me want to sing like John Denver. On others, all signs of travel had long since disappeared.

  People in New Mexico were friendly. Cars on back roads often stopped to inquire if I was OK or needed anything. New Mexico might be the best state in which to hitch a ride or find assistance, even though population is low outside of a few cities.

  I carried lots of maps as well as GPS. I had every day's route programmed into the GPS with my own points indicating each turn in the trail, all drawn on my home co
mputer and transferred to the GPS with a click of a mouse and many phone conversations with Garmin’s customer service. Ain't technology grand? Even for a non-techie grandmother. I also carried Ley's maps, Wolf's descriptions, and the CDTA map-book pages. In addition, I carried National Forest maps for information regarding bailout roads, two of which were used when TOB left the trail.

  I like history as well as trails and enjoyed historical points of interest in New Mexico. My old friend Terry, in Las Cruces, contributed to the accumulation of history with our trip to the museum Jornado de Los Muertos. The Columbus route went by an old fort and passed native people’s petroglyphs. I walked in the Gila Cliff Dwellings imagining those who lived there. Ghost Ranch had Museums covering history from dinosaurs to Georgia O'Keefe.

  I treasure the memories of people, who helped me along the way: El Coyote and Mary in Deming, Lynnae in Mimbres, George and Jan on McNight Road, Anna at Wildwood Retreat, David Cordoba and his dump truck south of Cuba, Gail at Ghost Ranch, and TOB and Jan, who became my friends as we hiked together.

  New Mexico is do-able, even for an aging hiker. Three extra food drops beyond regular thru hikers’ resupply points accommodated my slow pace and need for a lighter pack. Lynnae had never before provided a food drop for a hiker at Emory Pass. David from the REI in Albuquerque was willing to drive out with a food drop on the highway two days from Cuba, and Bryce from Big Mountain Sports in Santa Fe set up the food drop at Hopewell Lake with camp host Sara. Those extra food drops were key in helping me cover the same trail as thru hikers, even though I could travel only half as fast. I wished for a food drop at Snow Lake, but it was so far in the back of beyond, it was beyond my ability to arrange.

  Logistics were challenging and navigation necessary. Scenery was varied. Learning opportunities were many, and the people were wonderful. It was a great hike.

  Two months’ worth of weeds and gardening awaited me back home in Washington. Of much greater importance, my newest granddaughter had been born the day I left the trail, and I looked forward to seeing her.

  Chapter 34 July 2012

  PCT – Skipped Sections Completed

  Two small sections were left in California; I’d skipped them one year due to knee problems and one year due to snow. Now I planned to do them in July with no snow and (hopefully) no new knee problems.

  In the heat of July hiking out of Kennedy Meadows before the Sierra could be brutal. Before I arrived, my friend and trail angel from Kelso, Mary Barcik, whom I had met in 2009, told me I’d lucked out, and the temps should be only in the 90s. To one from the Pacific Northwest, it was hard to fathom temps dropping to the 90s. But I was determined to finish the PCT. RockStar, whom I’d met in 2008, would join me for the last three days. My cuz, She Who Hikes in Car, and her daughter, Sheila, would be trail angels.

  Fresh off the plane arriving at Reno from Washington, my cousin and her daughter dropped me off at the bridge over the Kern River, and—with no pack, wearing town clothes, and carrying hiking poles—I walked to the campground where they met me for a bite of dinner and gave me my gear. It was warm enough to take my shirt off and let the warm breeze caress my skin as I walked. A lovely way to start a hike.

  Mary Barcik, now 77, had hoped to do some of this hike with me, but a bout of shingles changed her plan. Nevertheless, Mary did come to see me off, stayed the night in the campground, and walked two miles with me. Just as in 2009, we jabbered all the way, catching up on life on a cool and pleasant walk to the next bridge. Mary said I must have good connections upstairs because the weather had been 20 degrees higher the week before.

  After Mary turned around to walk back to her car, Rattle Dancer and Doe, section hikers in their 60s, met me returning back the way they had come, daunted by the lack of water. They’d been counting on Halfmile maps and Yogi's book for water sources. But this was a hot, dry year and both Halfmile and Yogi focused on thru-hikers, who walk this section a month earlier. I was thankful for Mary and RockStar's heads-up messages about water before I left home. I could still get in trouble if the creek 12.7 miles past the Kern River was dry. But I was only counting on two water sources for the trip. Rattle Dancer and Doe had depended on more.

  Walking through burn areas, some old and some from the more recent fires in 2008, I was glad to find deep shade for lunch and a nice breeze all afternoon. There were no big displays of flowers; a few were still sprinkled beside the trail. Cowboy camping in trees by the bridge over the Kern, I took a brief bath, washed my socks, and loaded up with water. As night fell, I listened to the birds singing in the trees.

  In the morning it was 27 degrees. Brr. I was glad not to have hot weather, but 27 in July was colder than expected. While packing up, I heard the long howl of coyote or wolf, making me smile, glad, whatever the critter was, it was sharing the wilderness with me. I left the Kern with a full load of water.

  Walking along the trail above the meadowland and hearing a cow’s continuous bawling, I wondered if a predator had picked off a calf. Then I saw Mama cow standing in the middle of the meadow and baby coming from the side. The calf stopped halfway there, as if wondering how much trouble he was in. Mama cow still loudly bawling, walked toward him, whereupon baby calf galloped the rest of the way to Mama and started nursing. No more bawling Mama cow. Domestic bliss reigned in cow land.

  The day was a very long uphill climb of 2,700 feet. Between 9,500 feet and 10,500 feet was a real struggle. All those little red blood cells carrying extra oxygen that I’d had in New Mexico in the spring seemed to have left my body. It doesn’t take long to lose conditioning.

  The rewards for the work were many: views of Beck and Monache Meadows, Olanche Peak beside me, Mt. Langley, Kaweah Peaks Ridge, Mt. Whitney, and Kern Peak farther away, red-orange trunks and twisted roots of upturned Foxtail Pine and flowers: blue flax, ranger's buttons, cow parsley, red columbine, wild geranium, chiming bells, and corn lilies added to others seen the day before. There was more to see than I expected in that short section.

  It sprinkled around midnight that night, but by morning the tent was dry. Leaving with 4 ½ liters of water, ten pounds, would be enough to get me to Horseshoe Meadows if it wasn’t beastly hot. It was a lot of weight for me to carry, but water is life.

  The climb out of Death Canyon wasn’t as bad as its reputation. It was uphill, but I loved the nicely graded trail of the PCT, and I continued to have luck with cool temperatures in the 70s.

  The day was flowerless except for one brief area, but a granite playground on all sides gave me plenty to look at. The trail was California decomposed granite, and my poles made a swishing sound at each step as they poked into the tiny pebbles of the trail, like a snare drum played with brushes. Most of the trail was firm, a few places like walking on sandy beach. Foxtail pine and junipers were prevalent. Snags left standing without their bark had long spiral bands of red, yellow, and brown. That night I took my bandana bath with just a half-cup of water. I should have drunk the water, but it made me feel better to be clean.

  Hearing yippy coyotes having a party, I decided they were celebrating that I was almost done. As I came to the Trail Pass trail, I had a nice little mental click in my head for completion of that section.

  Arriving at Horseshoe Meadows before 11:00, I didn't expect my cousin until mid-afternoon. So I ate my lunch and bragged about my hiking prowess to those at the campground. I do love to brag about being an old hiker on the trail. I also took other people's pictures, gave lightweight hiking advice, and prevented one group from heading down the wrong trail. I felt like a Jr Ranger.

  When my cuz arrived, we went to see the real Ranger and picked up the hiking permit for my last section. We met my buddy RockStar, and my cuz washed my hiking clothes for me before she said good-bye. What a dear thing. I hopped into RockStar’s car, and we drove to Red’s Meadow to camp. We hiked the little loop hike to the Devil's Postpile and the short piece of PCT to the Resort.

  RockStar and I enjoyed hiking together. We did a lot of chattering, ca
tching up with the last four years. RockStar had thru-hiked the PCT in 2009, all the way from the Mexican Border to the Canadian Border in one hiking season. All that was after hiking from the Mexican Border to Ashland, Oregon, in 2008. She started over again in 2009 because she wanted a true thru hike. And people think I’m crazy. She had, however, led a more sedentary life since then and had put on a few pounds. In 2008 she’d been a faster hiker than me, but now she was content to hike at my pace. I was delighted to have a trail companion.

  In the morning we saw a martin for the first time. Think a longer, sleeker version of a squirrel that scurried across the trail and up some rocks.

  On a long, hot, strenuous afternoon, we climbed more than 2,000 feet. The 90-degree weather had found me. Ugh. But although the way was long and took a lot of energy, the views were terrific. Ritter and Banner Peaks and a saw-tooth ridge were classic Sierra. And Shadow Lake was almost too perfect to be real with tall peaks behind, granite all around, and outlet creek plunging into the valley.

  Monkshood and larkspur joined many bright flowers as we reached Badger Lake. Our nearest camping neighbors had bear problems that night, with much yelling and banging to scare the bear away, but no bear came near our campsite or our bear cans.

  A thunderstorm came through at 4:00 in the morning, drenching our tents, and we left our campsite with threatening clouds in the sky, hiking with pack covers on. After a little rain and hail, the rain stopped, although it remained cloudy all day.

  The weather didn’t matter much to me as we were surrounded by beautiful scenery: high mountain lakes, flowers, beautiful streams with crystal clear water and craggy mountain peaks with glaciers and granite. Glorious. What a nice section to end my quest to walk the PCT. We climbed past Thousand Island Lake, every bit as beautiful as advertised. We went over Island Pass and past Rush Creek with its many waterfalls, climbed on bare rock over Donahue Pass, and down past a lovely tarn at the base of Mt. Lyell, the highest peak in Yosemite.