SILVERTHORNE, CO
What an adventure! The CDT never fails to bring the unexpected.
I began on a cold and windy day with a plan to cover 27 miles into Silverthorne. My bailout if it was slow going was to camp early (again) at 17 miles and save money on a hotel night. I will be in Breckenridge (next to Silverthorne) until Sept 11, so it is just a matter of how many hotel nights I want to pay for. I plan to stay at Fireside Inn for $35 a night
I hit the trail just before 7:00, which is a bit later than ideal. With my down jacket on I began my 2,000 ft climb up to over 13,000 ft elevation. I’m glad I didn’t take the jacket off because it was really windy and the temperature was just above 40 degF. Once up on the ridge, the views were expansive and amazing.
When the ridge walk ended at Jones Pass, I took the long road downhill on the Silverthorne alternate where I stopped for lunch at the bottom of the mountain. By then the wind had calmed and it warmed a bit, so the down jacket got packed up.
I then had a climb of about 2,000 ft which got me on top of a ridge again, with more impressive views. At the end of the ridge was an enormous cairn, which was a little off trail but I wanted a close look at it.
This is when things got weird. The trail is supposed to go downhill, and I saw a few cairns to guide me. After seeing no more cairns and no tread I checked my CDT Hiker app which showed I was way off trail. How? I wandered around going across some nasty, ankle busting terrain to find tread again. The tread disappeared soon, and the app showed I was again way off trail.
This was what I dealt with the rest of the day. I had to do some crazy bushwhacking on some pretty extreme slopes to find cairns or tread.
The last climb was Ptarmigan Pass, which was 2.5 miles from a stream to the pass and about 1,500 ft of climb. I stopped at the stream for water at about 3:30 pm. I did not want to camp that early, and figured I could cover the remaining 10 miles to Silverthorne before dark. I pushed on.
The navigation remained a nightmare. There was the occasional cairn or strip of tread, but I was back and forth looking for it. When I finally got going up the biggest part of the climb the tread improved and I felt like I was making decent progress. I got to the top of the pass and looked for the way down.
The way down was actually up. In typical CDT fashion, it keeps you climbing as long as possible. By now the sun was still on the horizon, but not for long. Finding the trail remained a daunting problem. Most of the time I was walking on very treacherous terrain, causing trips and slips.
I found some decent tread as the sun was setting. I put on my headlamp, but it wasn’t very bright. I had been using it a lot and the batteries might have been low. Pretty soon it was dark and I had very blurry vision of the trail. It became really hazardous, but all I could do was keep going until I got to town. A stream crossing in deep woods in the dark with a weak headlamp was pretty scary.
Somehow I made it to a road. This was very much like the long night walking into Lordsburg. At least I could kind of see where I was going. As I descended down the road toward city lights there were fireworks going off across town. Were they announcing my arrival?
I got into town and called the Fireside Inn. They were completely booked that night. I was standing right next to a hotel, so I went in. It was $122 a night, and I wasn’t interested in hiking more miles for a better deal.
I got a hot bath, went to the brewery next door for a burger and brews, and then got into a comfy bed.
I have about 450 miles left before my CDT hike is complete. What other adventures await?