Bikepacking the Colorado Trail: Part 5
Day 9: Shavano CG to just past Marshall Pass TH
Stats: 13.39mi Elevation Gain: 3806ft, Moving time: 3h58m, Elapsed time: 6h25m
The morning was dry but still cloudy. The ground was still wet, but we took the time to set out all of our wet gear to try to dry some things out while we ate breakfast, sipped our steaming coffee and packed. Our goal for the day was to try to get up and across Marshall Pass by the thunderstorms and then just get as far as we could, which didn’t turn out to be very far… haha Though, elevation-wise 3.8k ft in 13 miles is a pretty big feat.
So, the day started out alright, but before too long, the rain began. We began the climb up towards Fooses TH that would lead us to the top of Monarch Crest and over to Marshall Pass. I was pleasantly surprised with the climb up towards Foose’s. Aliza was not. Her legs weren’t having it, and it turned out that she was also very distracted mentally because she was going through some relationship stuff which had come to a head while she was out on the trail. So, needless to say, with her brain energy going elsewhere, she didn’t have much grit left to help push her along the relentless ascending landscape.
We arrived at the Fooses trailhead and saw her van parked. We got pretty excited because we were thinking that maybe we could get some dry socks and clothes, but alas, it was all locked up and Patty was nowhere to be seen. We knew he was out riding that morning, but didn’t know where he was at the time, so we decided not to wait for him since we needed to keep climbing to avoid any worse weather. So much of the trail was rideable, much more than I had thought, which put my spirits in top gear and propelled me forward. I kept pulling ahead a bit and then waiting for my buddy to make sure she was alright and still moving forward.
Up the trail I saw/heard some MTB brakes coming towards us and out of the forest appeared Patty and his friend Chris, who had joined him for some rainy riding. They had ridden up Foose’s Creek access road, which connected to Monarch Crest, took that over and went down Foose’s creek. So, they got to experience the epic climb going the opposite way. After experiencing the up way, I don’t know which I would have rather done. Either way is epically steep and rocky.
Anyway, we chatted for just a bit, they were just as soggy as we were. Aliza finally joined with a not so happy countenance, said hello, and then we kept trudging upwards. I was under the impression that we had done most of the climbing and I was ecstatic that I had ridden so much so far. Little did I know that the worst was yet to come.
From then on out, the trail just got steeper and more rocky. Here was the part that everyone talked about. My mental party came to a halt when I realized that this was serious business. I just needed my shoulder to hold out through all the pushing and carrying my bike and we needed to get to the top before the big storm that was rolling in. Our mentality from here on out was just to get up to the top at our own pace. I made sure to check on Aliza, especially on any of the especially steep spots where you had to hoist your bike or shove your bike inch by inch up the hill. Her knee was very tired/painful and she was not in a good head space.
Eventually after hours of pushing/hauling, I crested the very top of Monarch Crest. I thought I almost wasn’t going to be able to push my bike fully-loaded by myself up the last stretch. To say steep was an understatement. It was, by far, the steepest section of trail we had to hike up. Aliza was a ways back so I ditched my bike after a quick breather and hiked back down to help. She graciously accepted and we inched our way up to the top, her pushing from the front and me following from behind. The relief from being at the top quickly overrun by the urgency to get down off the mountain. We could see the darkness creeping in and it was freezing at the top. We managed a quick snack, a few pictures and tried to enjoy the view and kept pushing on.
Once you crest, you get to traverse the ridge and head generally downhill towards Marshall Pass and the jeep road. This section would have been fun had we not been in a hurry and not been freezing cold. The wind was whipping around us, and the rain which had started to sprinkle was feeling more like a sleet on our faces. We made it to the road without any major incidents and sat on the side of the road deciding what we wanted to do next. As we ate lunch, suddenly there was a boom of thunder and a torrential downpour began complete with wind, sleet, lightning, etc. We had missed the storm by just minutes and were glad we weren’t hadn’t spent any more time at the crest. Aliza decided that it would be best for her to call it for a while. We agreed to set up the tent and sleep/chill for a bit to see if the rain would dissipate after a few hours.
This is when the already blowing/raining chaos that was already happening got even worse. We were trying to find a spot right off the road to set up the tent. We found a bit of “dryer” ground under some trees right down from the roadside, though it was covered with cowpies. We scouted around and finally found a small space that we thought would suffice for our tent. So, now, to get the full picture - we are trying to set up a tent in a monsoon, sleeting, hailing, full wind, trying to avoid cowpies, sopping wet with freezing hands, and trying to do so as quickly as possible. We got the tent set out on the footprint, but then quickly realized that rain was getting inside the body of the tent because it was netted and the rainfly wasn’t on. We just figured that we’d hurry, but then as we were trying to get the poles out, one of the pole parts unlodged from the middle part, and looked like it broke off. AFter a bit of scrambling, we got the poles together again, and started fitting it to the tent when it came apart again. It was then, that we realized, thankfully that it wasn’t broken, but it had come unscrewed at the center joint. ONce that was fixed, the rest went quickly, but not before Aliza managed to lodge her entire foot into a thick and juicy cowpie. Ugh! I felt so bad for her! What else could go wrong!
As soon as we got the tent up, Aliza got in the tent, gear and all and got in her sleeping bag to warm up. I managed to get into some warm clothing and got in my bag as well and we sat in silence, I think somewhat in shock and somewhat just relieved that we weren’t in the rain and the cold any more. ALiza had been smart and brought hand warmers, so she shared one with me, which was a life saver.
She fell asleep instantly and I sat there wondering what I was going to do for the time being. It was still early in the day and I didn’t know whether to change my clothes to night time clothes or to make dinner or lunch or just try to fall asleep. I felt a bit claustrophobic: too cold and wet to go outside, but too restless to be sitting in a tent for the next however many hours. Eventually I dozed for a bit once I got warm, and then woke up very hungry. Now, I know that it is against the rules to eat or have food in your tent, but we agreed that this was a dire situation. After Aliza woke up I stressed to her that she needed to eat something, even though she didn’t want to, so we grabbed our goodies and made up some hot meal, keeping our food and fuel in the vestibule. We both kept our heated dehydrated meal packs in our sleeping bag as we waited for it to “cook” and I don’t think I’ve ever been so warm in such a dreary situation.
The rain didn’t let up and Aliza couldn’t bear to think of getting out of the warm, dry-ish tent to continue any further, so that was that. We slept on and off, eating when needed, only to get out of the tent to take care of business and put away food, and that was the rest of the day. We did “see” or rather hear one through-hiker that was actually hiking the CDT. We talked to him a bit through the walls of the tent. He mentioned that he had heard rumors of moose sightings right where we were camped. We hadn’t seen any, and hoped that they would just leave us alone if they came through when we were in the tent. The gentleman went on his way, I don’t know who he was or even what he looked like - but I hope he had a good rest of his rainy day hike! I think we were asleep before dark and slept through the night until morning.
Are we there yet?
Day 10: Marshall Pass to Razor Cr Trail/Lujan Creek
Stats: 21.5mi, Elevation Gain: 3829 ft, Moving Time: 5h50m, Elapsed Time: 9h22m
We woke up to glorious sun beams shooting rays through the clouds! It’s truly amazing what a little vitamin D does for the soul. Also, we had slept for probably 10 hours the night before so we were up and ready. We sprawled everything out in the meadow area to try to dry things out. We took a somewhat leisurely morning, trying to let things air out, and eventually we were on our way. Most of the next section of the CT is open to motorized traffic and eventually we would run into quite a few motos that we had to contend with. The beginning of the day went fairly quickly, open road, good weather and we made good time.
This was, until we ran into we ran into unrideable, deep, thick, peanutbutter puddles of mud. There was actually a small group of people doing trail work on the area and said that after they got done with the work, it would be mostly rideable. They were fixing the drainage on the trail so the puddling woudln’t happen. It was obvious that the moisture had just wrecked the trail so it was great to see that they were in the process of rehabilitating it. We said our thanks and proceeded to choose between whether we wanted to slosh our feet in the puddles or risk falling over on our bikes. A little of both happened as we made our way through to the other side.
From what I remember, the climb up Sargants Mesa wasn’t horrible. The trail was pretty smooth with occasional roots or rocks and the grade was more bearable. But not so horrible dissolved quickly as we navigated baby head sized rocks on a consistent false-flat ascent. Aliza’s patience for such terrain was short and she started cussing/walking quite a while before I did, which was surprising because she had the full suspension bike. Thai said, after a while, though a lot of the trail was “rideable” my butt finally got fed up and I just lost my mind a bit and had to get off my bike and walk. I just couldn’t even deal any more. You just really start to feel like all of your energy is sucked out by each baby head that your tire rolls over or bumps into. That, combined with the fact that I was on a hardtail just started to add up until I couldn’t take it any more and walking was had for a while until I could gather my wits again.
The descent from Sargents Mesa was no better. It’s always a disappointing thing when you get excited about descending because you should be able to go way faster with way less energy expenditure than all other parts of the trail, but the trail had other things in mind for us.
We came to see that instead of glorious descent as we had hoped, the trail funneled us into an un-rideable very rocky, rooty, jumble of boulders and washed away crevices of a trail, which was shared by motos. We approached a steep descent part of the trail to find a couple on motos heading the same way we were. They ended up passing us, which we were thankful for, but then we caught up to them eventually as they tried to push/navigate their machines down the narrow, steep “trail.” We waited for quit a while as they hefted and rolled and gunned their motors, slowly making progress. Finally, they let us pass. Even though we weren’t really riding the boulders, our bikes were a lot more manageable than theirs and we eventually made our way down the hill.
Our plan was to make it to Razor Creek, where we hoped there would be water somewhere near a place that we could camp.
We had run into a few people who had mentioned that there was an amazing view point that we could see if we left the trail just a bit and rode a few miles and then back. By the time we got to the turn off it was getting late so we coudln’t be bothered. Aliza was struggling again both mentally and physically and I did my best to be moral support and understanding but also had to give a bit of a pep talk to get her through the afternoon. We crested over the high point of the day and followed the Continental Divide for a short portion before descending towards Razor Creek. There were a smattering of tents at the top of the descent near Razor Creek and we started to worry a bit about the water situation because we didn’t see much as the creek trickled down the hill, disappearing into the moss and dead logs.
We finally found a place that seemed to have a bit of water and would be large enough space for our tent. Aliza started putting up the tent and I went to scout water. The water was only a trickle, but about 300 yards from camp I found a spot where it pooled. I dug a little bit into the mud and created a larger pool, waited for the sediment to dissipate and then used my mug to put water into the filter. It took quite a while, but worked in a pinch! The rain actually wasn’t so bad as we cooked our dinner and settled in for the night.
