Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  Half a mile later, past the open knoll was much better. I walked in forest most of the day listening to the wind howl in the treetops but not feeling it at the level of the trail. By morning snack, I’d shed all cold weather gear. The day was beautiful. The high point, four miles into the day, had wonderful views I could actually see, all the way across the Helena valley to mountains on the other side of the basin. If Kathy had not mashed herself up, I would have recommended the walk for a nice day hike. I thought of her all day, praying for her pain to ease.

  Quite a bit greener on the south side of MacDonald, a few flowers grew with a backdrop of green grass. It was such a nice change to have fresh air and blue skies with real clouds in them, not gray smoke and haze.

  I met RockStar on Telegraph Creek Road. Walking to the turn, she gave me a lift back to the campsite, bringing pizza for dinner, which we ate while two whitetail bucks walked through the edge of our campsite. RockStar also brought the good news that Kathy was quite a bit better.

  We heard elk bugling in the night rather close to us, making a late summer/fall hike feel complete. We ate breakfast in my nice warm car while defrosting the frozen windows. Then I set off up the hill on a good gravel/dirt road.

  Moving well that day, I sent RockStar a text that I would make it out a day earlier than planned. Then I had a goal to shoot for. I met several NOBO thru hikers that day: Funk, OD, Mountain Spice, Dayman, and LaLa. I had nothing but bad news to give them about all the fires. They would have to do a lot of road walking to reach Canada. Some took the news well, others not so much. They all looked pretty tired.

  By afternoon, I was pretty tired, too. My water source turned out to be just a mud puddle, so I was on short water rations until after the first five miles the next day. No Ziploc bath. Water was for drinking only. But I tucked in ready for bed listening to coyotes in the distance, almost as good as listening to elk bugling.

  The elk bugled in the early morning. Although I heard them and saw their tracks often, they remained elusive and unseen. Looking chipper and ready for the day, Sheerah, a young woman NOBO thru hiker passed me while I finished breakfast.

  My day was mainly a walk in woods up over Thunderbolt Mountain, much of the day strong winds tearing through skinny lodgepole pines making a forest of very long toothpicks sway in the wind rubbing on each other. Sometimes they blew down. I hoped none would fall on me.

  Going with minimal water in the morning worked just fine. The pack was lighter, the morning cool, and I usually was thirstier in the afternoon. So filling my bottles at 11:00 and another liter and a half at 5:00 worked perfectly.

  Some of the map-marked water sources were dry. Thunderbolt Creek wasn’t running, but there were pools of standing water. I dipped and poured through a bandana to get out the floaties and then Steripenned. Just a bit farther was an unmarked running stream. Pools of water or running water, either way worked.

  While finishing lunch, I met thru-hiker Dan, a cheerful hiker. I liked seeing cheerful thru hikers. I was really annoyed with whoever wrote “CDT sucks” on signs. My opinion was and is: If you don't like hiking the CDT, don't hike it. Nobody makes a person stay on the trail. Get off the trail, and do something you enjoy. Don't inflict others with your bad attitude by writing on signs that will last for years, although your mood will be temporary and is only related to you.

  Hiking long-distance trails are not always unadulterated fun, and 2015 was kind of a miserable year with snow in the early season in Colorado and fires in the summer. But still, nobody is forced to keep hiking if they don't want to. No one forced me to be there. It was my choice to see where the trail would take me each day and discover whatever sights or adventures were disclosed.

  So, what did I see? I saw the flash of tan as a deer bounded away, 3-4 startled ptarmigans, small birds, chipmunks, and squirrels. I liked seeing views and animals of all kinds, including thru hikers. I liked trees. I liked the wind singing in trees, at least most of the time. Stopping at 7:30, I snuggled into my tent and listened to the wind.

  It was 37 degrees when I woke up and cold enough to make me wish I could stay snuggled longer. I left wearing my down jacket. A mile or so down the road, rain threatened, and I switched to rain gear and umbrella. The first three miles seemed endless. There was a new trail to the Divide bypassing Leadville. I wasn’t sure whether to follow the new sign or Guthook and did a little of both, ending up walking through Leadville hoping there was something to see to make it worth my while. Nope. Nothing worth seeing in Leadville, and it was just more miles on rotten, very rocky road/trail. I should have kept with the new trail and saved myself some grief, not to mention miles.

  Spending lots of energy on that little excursion, I was very tired. Stopping for a break at 11:00 I thought I would be lucky to meet RockStar by 8:00. But after break, walking went better. I saw a whole field of the yellow flowers called butter and eggs, strange in that land of few flowers.

  Wildlife consisted of about 100 cows spread out over the last five miles. They were stupid cows, wanting to stick to the road/trail ahead of me, so I kept herding cows down Long Park and beyond, no matter how I talked to them trying to persuade them to get off the road and eat grass in the meadows like happy cows should.

  Great views in the second half of the day revealed mountains to south and east, the great valley and more mountains to the west. It rained off and on throughout the day and stayed cold, never reaching above 55. I used rain gear and umbrella most of the day.

  About two miles from Champion Pass, I met Andy, another NOBO thru, and chatted with him. He had a great attitude even though he knew he had a long road walk around the fires ahead of him. Most thru hikers had good attitudes. They’d covered a couple thousand miles and surmounted many challenges by that time in their hike. The road walk was just another challenge to be overcome. It was disappointing to them to miss the Chinese Wall and Glacier National Park, but their goal was to reach Canada in one hiking season. They would do that, even if they had to walk roads a couple hundred miles. Section hikers can anticipate closed trails opening in another year, not needing to reach Canada in one.

  RockStar was waiting in my car at Champion Pass, and I was very glad to see her. My feet were really glad to see her, one foot hurting quite badly that last day. We drove back to Helena, and my filthy body was transformed by soap and water to a somewhat normal person again.

  Broken Ribs and a Broken Foot

  In the morning, we loaded Kathy, hooked up to an oxygen tank, into Kathy's car, extra tanks in the trunk. RockStar drove Kathy's car. I drove mine. David would drive their truck home pulling their trailer, taking his time doing it. The goal of those in cars was to drive to Tacoma/Puyallup in one day.

  My left foot was very sore on the top of the foot near the articulation of metatarsals. I was glad not to be walking on my foot, but it continued to hurt all day, even with natural pain meds and Tylenol. It was a very long day with frequent restroom stops, gas stops, and food stops, all complicated by moving Kathy's oxygen tank with her. She left her cane in one restroom while RockStar and I struggled with changing an oxygen tank. It hissed loudly, meaning a connection wasn’t tight, and so startled us that we dropped the wrench needed to tighten it. A short comedy ensued until we had it fixed correctly. In the confusion and stress of hikers playing with oxygen tanks, the new cane was left behind.

  Kathy did well. She was much more spry than I thought she would be. Her oxygen levels seemed to improve throughout the day even when not on the tank. But she (and we) were plenty tired by the time we delivered her to her home and their housemate for care. After she was settled in a recliner, RockStar and I drove to Puyallup.

  The last stop was to get milk and bananas for breakfast. Walking to the far end of Safeway on my very painful foot seemed more difficult than any hiking I’d done. Once home, I fell gratefully into bed. But my swollen and red left foot hurt like crazy.

  The foot turned out to be a bit of a problem. I’d hiked nearly 300 miles but on the las
t day it seems I acquired a stress fracture of my third metatarsal about an inch below the tarso-metatarsal joint. (For non-medical types, that means it was on one of the long foot bones on the top of my foot.) The fracture was tiny. Until the Doc magnified the x-ray, it couldn't really be seen. Under magnification it looked like a tiny splinter split up from the main body of the bone. But it hurt and required wearing a boot for four weeks, rather inconvenient for gardening.

  Another year on the trail had come to a close. The CDT had not been especially kind to me in 2013, 2014 and 2015. I had been bedeviled with lousy weather, forest fires, smoke and an unexpected stress fracture.

  Montana was a big state. I had hundreds of miles yet to go. Whether or not I would finish the CDT was still an unsettled question. I would have to wait and see if I could complete the trail or advancing age and failing body parts would prevent that from happening.

  But there were joys, too, in 2015. I was able to hike with RockStar again and greatly appreciated that she hung around to hike after getting out of The Bob. I enjoyed helping three friends learn about backpacking. Our little group in The Bob was quite compatible and had a good time in spite of reroutes and trail closures. They were now experienced backpackers with a nine-day trip under their belts. I enjoyed mentoring them.

  We might not have seen the South Chinese Wall, but we did see the North Wall, more than many of the year's thru hikers could say. I still liked walking the trail, although each year I was a little slower and could go a little less far. I needed a different style of shoe. I didn’t want another stress fracture. I needed more cushioning. The next year I would try Hokas.

  Chapter 44 Fall and Winter 2015-2016

  Another Replacement

  Another aging body consideration was my right shoulder. The original x-rays of my shoulders a few years earlier had indicated severe arthritis in the left shoulder and moderate arthritis in the right. After my first shoulder replacement, my doc had told me I probably wouldn’t wait as long to have surgery on the right one as I’d waited for the left. He was right. Although I still had pretty functional range of motion on the right, I’d developed a weird, sharp pain in one particular movement. I couldn’t get my hand out of my pocket. That sounds nuts, but it was true. I could put the hand in the pocket with no problem, but there was something about getting it out that gave me a sharp stabbing pain in the joint. I didn’t want to wait for it to get worse and scheduled the next replacement.

  “So glad you are still able.” Connie, March 6, 2016

  Recovery from the shoulder replacement went more smoothly and quickly the second time around. I did have a problem during a conditioning hike in preparation for my spring hike on the ADT. The right knee seemed to be getting older faster than the rest of me. The x-ray said I had a torn meniscus, but it was unclear whether that was the old tear re-injured or just the old tear. The joint space was diminishing, but I knew something was different. The knee didn’t rest well and would sometimes start hurting and wake me up from sleep. Connie, one of the people who signed my guest book, said she was so glad I was still able. Able was a very fluid category.

  Yet I knew I was very fortunate to be able still to be backpacking. That knee with the new pain carried me 489 miles on the ADT in the spring with a bit more attention to prophylactic pain meds. I did have to work at staying healthy and active, plan and execute my hikes in a different fashion than younger folks and pay close attention to whatever the knee told me. I had no idea how long I would be able to hike. Once I reached my 70s, I considered every day to be a gift and every hike to be a spectacular gift. There would come a day when I couldn’t hike. But while I still could, I would.

  Time at home after my spring hike sped by at lightning speed. The CDT hike would be a scramble of differing sections, mostly NOBO but some SOBO. The reasons for the hodgepodge approach to assembling sections were the National Park lottery system for backcountry campsites at Glacier National Park and campsite reservations in Yellowstone National Park. The National Parks gave reservations when the National Parks decided to give them, and we needed more campsites than thru hikers. Other sections of the CDT were added around reserved times in National Parks to make the most of our available time, chosen for the number of days in the hike plan, not for consecutive miles on the trail.

  Thru hikers recognize that hiking long trails is a marathon, not a sprint. Section hiking the Triple Crown was more like relentlessly making piles and piles of miles and days, accumulating over the years toward eternity. The piles of miles were growing, but the CDT is longer than AT and PCT. I wondered if I would find eternity before finding the end of the CDT.

  RockStar, and I’d both turned in campsite requests for Glacier. My request was turned down. Half of hers was accepted. We would take what we could get. Tailwinds told us when she might be able to support us for that little section skipped in Wyoming. Both of us planned to be driving our cars, putting on lots of car miles, while we skipped around Wyoming and Montana, placing food and water caches, setting up starts and pickups. It was a logistical challenge.

  To add to the logistical challenge, I was planning on taking a third long- distance hike in 2016. My friend Gwen, from Australia, whom I’d met on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, suggested we hike from the French town of Le Puy en Velay down to St Jean Pied de Port. I was planning that hike at the same time as planning the CDT, trying to learn French while I was at it. It was kind of nuts. But how could I turn down such an adventure? Having a friend from Australia ask me to hike in France wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

  Chapter 45 July 23, 2016

  CDT

  Centennials

  Finally, logistical challenges behind, I met RockStar in Lima, Montana. Leaving one car in Lima, we purchased water and drove a long ways on dirt roads and set up two water caches and one food cache in our bear cans.

  Caches set, we started out with full packs on the very first day going up 2,200 feet. We were not starting gradually. Ugh.

  The trail seemed to have changed since the edition of Bear Creek maps in my possession. The Guthook app on RockStar’s phone reassured us we were in the right place, though the map indicated we were far from Bear Creek waypoints. We went over Lion Head instead of around it.

  The change in route was worth the climb for the panorama on each side of the Divide, Tetons to the south, West Yellowstone in the distance, Lake Hebgen and the mountains beyond it, and other valleys and mountains on all sides. And the flowers were marvelous. It wasn’t at all like the tinder-dry conditions of 2015.

  Tons of flowers: hair bells, yarrow, lupine, paintbrush of shades from orange to magenta, four or five different kinds of yellow daisies, some covering whole hillsides, larkspur, some unusual white larkspur with purple centers, bright-blue penstemon, forget-me-nots, geranium, Lousewort, yellow columbine, stone crop, a purple fuzzy spiked phacelia, a creamy-colored flower with green centers, two or three white flowers whose name I didn’t know, blue flax, alpine phlox, chiming bells and a four-foot-tall thistle.

  We were quite enchanted by views and flowers and had plenty of time to see them as we slowly puffed up the hill. We also saw three SOBO women section hikers: Sweet Mama, Laurie, and Swan, Swan nearing the finish of her Triple Crown.

  Late in the afternoon, two young boys, who were looking for a geocache, passed us hiking part way up Bald Peak. We then saw them on very steep snow slopes ahead, and returning to their car, they warned us not to go there. I told them we were CDT hikers and had no intention of going up Bald; we were smarter than that. They admitted to being young and dumb and reassured us they had flashlights if they needed them on the way out.

  The trail reroute had eliminated some planned water sources, but we finally reached a stream as we rejoined the Bear Creek route. By the time we stopped at Clark’s Lake for the night, we were two tired little puppies, both having breathing difficulties.

  On the trail before 7:30 in the morning, we climbed another 1,000 feet to reach 10,000-foot Targhee Pass on the Divide
for mid-morning snack, followed by umpteen bazillion switchbacks downhill, and we lost more than 3,000 feet in elevation. The last small elevation gain of the day, we were close to crawling up the hill. This wasn’t a gentle start to a long hike.

  The last week in July was prime flower season. More flowers included monkey flower, pussy paws, goldenrod, sulfur flower, lavender mallow, and fireweed.

  During the day we met four SOBO thru hikers, who were our neighbors at the Lima Motel: Saint John the Baptist, JR, Grahams, and Blue Skies. They were doing 30+ mile days, taking three days to do what would be eight days for us. Nice to be young and buff. We were neither. The trail is not just for the young, but it takes more planning and more time when you are older and can’t whip off the miles so quickly.

  We finally reached our first water cache at Reynolds Pass just before 7:00 that night, our plan to go past the highway a short distance to camp. The plan was thwarted as the trail was only posts hidden in knee and waist-high greenery, sometimes bent over by passage of other hikers, all on top of honeycombed gopher/mole holes and tunnels. Stumbling through vegetation over uneven ground, we eventually found what could pass for a campsite.

  RockStar was still having breathing issues, though we were camped at only 6,920 feet. My knees were doing better than expected. But two hard days and stopping near a highway provided too great a temptation for a bailout. RockStar bailed. I went on.