A Lazy Labor Day Weekend

My lovely company announced they were giving us the Friday before Labor Day weekend off, so I decided I would take a four-day, end-of-summer backpacking trip. I chose a 28-mile loop in Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness that seemed rugged but doable. Since I didn't have much time to plan, I just skimmed a few maps, calculated some mileages, and threw my stuff together. Although I did take a moment to do a very silly thing.

I bring travel-sized tubes of sunscreen backpacking, and the one I had was almost out. I hate having to buy new little tubes all the time, it seems wasteful. So I tried to tape a large tube to the smaller tube and squirt the former into the latter. It worked, barely. Not enough to make me want to try it again.

I had just moved into a new place, and had been occupied with packing and unpacking the last few days, so it wasn't until after ten at night that I could start getting ready for my trip. That means it was about midnight by the time I was done cleaning the sunscreen off my hands, the counter, and the floor. I needed to be up in four hours. Four hours of sleep doesn't sound like a lot, but it's way more than zero, which is what I actually ended up getting. I don't know why. I'm sometimes excited or nervous before a trip and don't sleep well, but zero is definitely a record.

Still, I rose in the 4 am dark and began to drive. Going through Glenwood Canyon, where the Grizzly Creek fire had been burning over the past month, the air coming through my car's vents was nasty. It smelled like burnt peanut butter. At least it wasn't so smoky that I couldn't see the horizon, as it had been for much of the last few weeks. I had spent most of those weeks indoors, and my throat would burn after even a 20-minute walk outside the apartment.

By 8 am I was starting to fall asleep, so it was good I was finally coming to the dirt road that led to the trailhead. This turned out to be quite a trip. The road was very narrow and winding, and the sun was directly in my eyes as I curved up into the mountains. Anytime there was a shadowy section, I could not in any way see what I was driving into. A pothole? A ditch? Another car? Then the road curved again and I came to this, which -- thanks to the south-facing angle -- I was actually able to see.

It was a river. The road crossed a river. My Prius definitely hadn't signed up for this, but I gunned it forward and splashed through the torrent, sending a spray of white water flying around me. All right, I'm lying. You don't gun a Prius. But I drove through it and everything was fine and very normal.

I parked and began hiking. I was on the Avalanche Creek trail, which was new to me. The trail was rugged and overgrown, and after two tiring miles I came to a tributary creek, where the trail ended in a washed-out bridge.

Red sandstone cliffs high above

The washed-out bridge

Thankfully I didn't have to drive over this one, and I was able to climb down into the gully and out the other side. The day was quickly growing hot. Steamy summer weekends seem like a great time to leave the city for the mountains, but climbing thousands of vertical feet with a giant backpack generates a lot of heat as it is. I would have been sweating doing this climb in 30-degree weather. It was inching toward 90. 

Makeshift cross and old avalanche chutes repopulated by aspen

I spotted a handmade cross stuck in a pile of river rocks and went down to take a photo. The stony "beach" of the river was littered with odd rocks of all shapes and colors, and I ended up spending about 45 minutes looking around for pretty ones. It's a weakness. There were many red sandstone rocks with white dots, indicative of the fact that some organic matter had been trapped in the original sediments, changing the chemistry of its surroundings. In this one, you can even see the organic matter at the center of the dot.

As I hiked onward I passed meadows and stands of aspen, then came to a distinctive burn area.

It was as if someone had inserted a piece of Mars into the Colorado forest. Bare, sterilized red soil stripped of nearly all life was interrupted here and there by trees or small stands that had somehow escaped the flames, and streams naked of vegetation wove through the area, carrying away the unsecured soil.

Few cairns had been erected and I had to search to find where the trail exited the area. (It's toward the southwest corner of the burn zone.) Eventually I passed into Duley Park, which was the only named meadow on my map. It was pretty enough.

Black bear claw marks on a tree -- either from climbing, or simply marking that he or she was there

By two o'clock I was beyond exhausted -- not just in the need for sleep, but in my muscles themselves. I felt in much worse shape than I expected to feel. And I was becoming very demoralized. I pulled out my map to see whether my current location would be a reasonable stretch of trail to camp on, given the number of miles I had to do the next day, and noticed something I hadn't noticed before.

I had thought the final day of my planned loop would be almost all downhill, half-bushwhacking on a very rough, steep trail. It wouldn't be that much fun, but I'd done such things before, and it would allow me to keep from having to double back. However, now that I was giving the map a better look than the rushed one I'd given it the night before, I noticed that there were actually about 2500 feet of steep, half-bushwacky elevation gain in that segment before I started going downhill. That last day was going to be hell.

I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't want to give up on my loop, but I already felt like crap and my muscles were only going to get more tired as the weekend went on. I took a mostly-overgrown side trail down to the creek and sat down on the stones to think. I was all alone; it looked like no hikers had used this side trail in at least two decades. I tried to refill myself with calories and electrolytes and chocolate; I leaned back on a boulder and read my book for a while. I noticed there was a bank of pearly everlasting behind me, the first surviving patch of flowers I had seen so far, which at least gave me a little smile. After an hour and a half I felt only marginally better, and made the tough decision to just find a campsite for the night.

In my search for someplace nice I ended up wandering ten or fifteen minutes back down the trail toward the car. Eventually, I found it: a nice flattish spot under some trees, a good distance from the "bustle" of the trail, with a view of a meadow and distant peaks. Down the hill was a beach area right on the creek, with a nice log to sit on. In terms of backpacking campsites, it was heavenly. I set up my hammock immediately and climbed into it with my book, letting myself relax in the cool shade and warm breeze. I had been miserable half an hour ago, and now I was in bliss.

You never think, when you're miserable, that you're going to be ecstatic a half-hour later.

The sun set at 4 pm. At least, it sank behind the ridge to the west of me. A bit disappointing, but I wandered down the trail to the next meadow, where I could watch the shadows creep up to the line of aspen. After that I had dinner, and then it wasn't so much longer until it was dark. I was about to get into my tent when I noticed a tree.

When people get concerned about me going into the woods alone, I expect they're usually worrying about other humans with ill intentions, or my getting lost or spraining an ankle, but these aren't the things I worry about. I worry about bears, mountain lions, and trees.

Bears and mountain lions don't actually attack very many people at all. But falling trees are an increasing danger for hikers, especially in Colorado, where so many trees are effectively dead on their feet, killed by beetles or wildfire. I always check around where I camp to make sure there aren't any trees that look like they could fall on me. Except this time I apparently hadn't checked so thoroughly, because now I saw a dead one that was leaning vaguely in the direction of my tent.

It wasn't a large tree, perhaps four inches in diameter, but I didn't like the look of it. Now, I have a solution for campsites I would really like to use but which host dangerous looking trees, and that is to push the questionable trees over.

I put my hands on this tree and gave it a shove. It rocked, just a tiny bit. Well, great. Now I definitely didn't want to just leave it and go to bed. The chances were small, but if something shifted, or a strong wind came up in the night, I could be a pancake by morning.

I pushed it again, and it moved just a little, no more. So I pulled back on it, and it came with me; I shoved again, and it shifted more than before. Something snapped down in the roots. This was the way. Over the next ten minutes I worked on rocking it back and forth, loosening it in the soil, snapping more roots. It wasn't easy work. I think I pulled a muscle in my back, a little. Trees are very heavy. The tree was always tilted away from me, so I wasn't concerned about it falling on me, but I was slightly concerned about poking myself in the eye with a branch as I rocked it. Mostly I managed to make a lot of noise in the dark and get a lot of pine needles down my clothes.

It loosened and loosened, and then I shoved it over and it fell! The moment of triumph. It did not in fact fall very near the tent, so maybe it was silly that I had even tried to push it over. But it was done.

I went to bed very warm and flush with my success, and had the best night of sleep I have ever had on any backpacking trip. Not a single worry about bears or mountain lions. I attribute this entirely to my pushing over the tree. I felt STRONG that night. I had the strength of a bear that had the strength of two bears! And I slept for 11 hours, woke, decided I was still sleepy, and slept for another 3 hours. That's almost two night's worth of sleep.

This is obviously the solution to my sleep problems on trips. I need to push over a tree, every night before bed. Every single night.

Tent, with fallen tree behind. Not the big one, the little one.

The view from my hammock

I woke for the second and final time at 10 am. The sun was full on my tent and I was burning up, in all my clothing and my 15 degree sleeping bag. By sleeping in so much I'd made it even more challenging to complete my planned loop, and that was okay. It was a kind of decision. I could see that what my body really wanted after all the packing and moving and unpacking was just to be able to relax. So I spent the day reading and writing in the hammock, and eating. It was lovely. So, so peaceful, so quiet, not a worry in my head.

The next day I slept in again, and then I became bored. I decided to take a day hike up to Avalanche Lake.

Though the trees weren't changing yet, the ground cover was.

A surprising number of plants turned a beautiful purple.

There were some thimbleberries remaining to be picked, and a few raspberries and currants too. I've never had thimbleberries before and they were very good. I ate as many as I could.

Thimbleberry

Rattlesnake plantain orchid

In some places, the aspen looked sickly, with crispy dry yellow leaves.

Beautiful fireweed

It was very hot. I was sweating like a dog as I climbed the final stretch to the lake, and there was hardly a cloud in sight. Finally the land leveled out.

Avalanche lake is truly beautiful. What's more, there were a ton of campsites and only a few people camping there -- on a holiday weekend. I didn't hang out for long because I wanted to get back to my hammock and read, but I did go wading.

Then I hiked back to my site. It had been a nice eight-mile day hike. The sun had already "set" by the time I got back at 3:40, and it was cold.

I debated hiking out to the trailhead then, and sleeping in the car so I could get an early start on traffic the next day. In the end, I dismissed the idea; I'd been getting such good sleep in my tent, and I wanted it to continue. So I slept to my heart's delight, and woke to the apocalypse.

The smoke that had nicely kept away for most of the trip, making only a faint haze that lent a little fuzziness to my photos, had now found me. At 9 am the sun bled a deep orange sunset light onto the landscape, and thick smoke hung over the valley. It was eerie. I know that Oregon and California have been dealing with worse than this for a while now, but it was new to me.

Weak light illuminates my meal spot

I normally would never have chosen to hike in air like this, but now I had to. I packed up and took a last few minutes to read in my hammock, enjoying the very fact that I could, and then I began hiking out.

My throat began to burn before I'd gone very far. The smoke was like a heavy fog hanging over the mountains; it looked like it was about to rain any minute. But it was hot, very hot. It was a relief when I made it to the car three hours later.

Unfortunately, I still had to drive home. It was the last day of a holiday weekend, and I knew traffic would be heavy, and had accepted this as the price of sleeping in. However, I didn't quite realize how bad it would be. It took me six hours to get home; it had taken me only 3.5 hours to drive to the trailhead at the beginning of the trip. I actually got in an hour of reading during the journey, traffic was going so slow. It made me wish I had just hiked to the car the night before and then driven out at 4 am.

I was in for a surprise when I got back. Weather reports were forecasting snow that night, and the following day as well. And as hot as it had been where I'd been backpacking, it had been even hotter in Denver; it had gotten up to 101 over the weekend. The forecast seemed crazy. But they were right.

We got a few inches here; a foot or more was projected for some locations in the mountains. Originally, I'd toyed with the idea of taking Tuesday off in order to have a longer trip, and now I was glad I hadn't. I wouldn't have seen the weather forecast change, and I'd have been in for a big surprise Monday night. My equipment will certainly keep me alive below freezing, but at the least, the hike out would have been a cold, wet one for my feet.

My throat still hurt quite a bit after I got home. It took two days to stop burning. I hope the snow has made the wildfires easier to fight and we won't have a summer like this again anytime soon!

A (Partially) Off-Trail Adventure

The summer storms have started, which means I get to take pictures of interesting clouds.

It's a little dull sitting at home, though, so I decided to head out on another close-to-home backpacking trip. I'd had the idea for a while. A few years ago, on a previous hike in the area, I'd discovered a path that wasn't on my map. It went a ways into the woods. It seemed to peter out the further I went, but the country was so open, with little underbrush or deadfall, it seemed it might be very possible to bushwhack straight east to the next trail, thus allowing the completion of a loop where only a U existed on the map, the two trailheads marked by the serifs of the U being divided by several miles of highway.

Having bought a smartphone earlier this year, I finally had access to reliable GPS -- unlike that on the work phone I'd brought with me on a trip last year. As soon as I needed it, that phone stopped being able to find any GPS satellites, despite my being on a flat plateau without a single ridge or tree blocking any of the sky.

I typically don't like to hike off-trail, both for safety reasons -- if something were to happen, certainly no one would stumble on me anytime soon -- and for physical reasons. Uneven terrain is very hard on my foot that has a neuroma, and hiking off-trail also takes much more energy than hiking on a trail. It tends to be exhausting.

But this seemed like a not-so-bad option. I had GPS, I should have cell service for most of it, and the terrain seemed fairly easy going. So I set off. After I'd driven about ten minutes from the house, I realized I'd forgotten my ballcap. Shoot. I'd already delayed in leaving, though, and was going to get to the trailhead later than I wanted, so even though I know I hate hiking without a hat, I decided I'd survive.

The flowers along the trail were blooming, and I took a photo of this penstemon.

It's only once I get down low to take a macro shot -- or, sometimes, once I'm editing the photo at home -- that I realize the flowers that look so beautiful from above are actually crawling with bugs. Here is one little fellow who seems dwarfed by the flower he's scaling:

What must it be like to be a bug exploring a flower that's as big as a small house to you?

Once I traveled up my trail to the wilderness boundary, about where I had made my easterly excursion a few years before, I cut east into the woods.

I immediately found myself struggling down a steep-sided gully to cross a stream, then up the other side, grasping at prickly pine branches to try to keep my top-heavy body + pack from falling backwards. And then another gully. This wasn't what I remembered from the last time. It was completely exhausting work trying to get up and down the steep slopes littered with loose pine needles, but finally I came to flatter ground and somewhat open forest.

I walked east, detouring around thickets or simply pushing through them. Eventually I came across a sign marking the national forest boundary and kept within it, not wanting to tick off some suspicious landowner whom covid-19 might have left with nothing to do but sit at home looking out the windows, possibly with a shotgun. I did pass rather close by someone's house.

Even the lawn chair is bored to death

The country became more open and I came at last to a dirt road, which surprisingly turned out to be one of the most scenic parts of my trip.

Roads are sometimes necessary to connect sections of trail. Normally, road walks are the worst. Roads lack shade and, if dirt, can be very dusty, especially if car traffic is allowed on them. They lack the foot-saving cushioning of humus or pine needles. They also tend to have longer straight sections than trails. When you can see where you're going for a mile or more ahead, the dopamine-inducing quest of "what's around the next bend" disappears and a voyage of discovery can turn into a bit of a dull slog.

But this road was exceedingly pretty. It was gone to grass and I wondered if anyone at all had driven on it in the last two decades. I passed meadows filled with wildflowers, stands of aspen, and, incongruously, a gravesite fenced in by pine timbers.

I didn't hop the timbers to get a closer look at the grave, but the deceased appeared to be a civil war veteran who had died in 1909. It was nice to see that someone was still honoring his grave, but a little amusing to see that the price sticker had been left on the flag.

Here's another set of flowers that turned out to have its own attendant insect:

By the way, the flowers really are that blue. They're quite stunning in real life.

I was amused that this ditch warranted signage. Apparently ditches are a big deal here. I wanted to do a little more bushwhacking because the road made a loop that I didn't feel like following all the way around, and I decided to simply follow this ditch. After a ways I had to leave it because it was turning south, but I crossed other seemingly unused ditches, and old roads through the forest with aspen growing up through them. It seemed like there used to be much more farming, ranching or mining in this area than there is now.

I had some confusion when I came out of the forest onto the road and turned right, as I should, only to have my GPS tell me I was walking southwest, not southeast. It took me ten minutes of going back and forth to figure out that there was a section of road that wasn't on my map, and that it, itself, was actually a cutoff of the loop I was trying to shortcut. That is, I could have just walked on this mysterious section of road, if I'd known it was there, instead of crashing through the woods.

As it was getting on towards dinner, the dirt road took me to another trail, which I expected to be faint as it didn't particularly go from anywhere or to anywhere, and I imagined few people used it. I was right. But it wasn't a bad trail; the first half, still trending east, was fairly easy walking, with a few partial views through the trees. By the time I got to the bend in the trail where it turned south and began climbing straight up the mountain, it was near dark. I was exhausted from the bushwhacking and realized how much energy it would take to get to my intended camping spot, still a mile or so uphill from here, and I didn't want to do it. I needed to find water and a place to camp.

The water was easy enough as I knew there was a stream up ahead, but finding a flat spot proved near impossible. The ground was steeply sloped here, which made me wish for a moment that I was a hammock camper instead of a tent user. But considering the low traffic this trail clearly received, I decided to just pitch my tent right on the trail, which was the only thing remotely approaching flat. (It was still pretty slanted.) It's the only time in nearly 25 years of backpacking that I've set up my tent right on a trail.

You can see just how faint the trail is in this picture. Or maybe you can't see any trail at all.

It's always hard for me to sleep on my first night in the backcountry. I also wasn't particularly comfortable that night as the ground made a bend downward right where my hips were, but that's not really something new... it can be very difficult to find a truly flat site in the backcountry, and when you do it's often somewhere that fills with water when it rains. The thing is that a poor night of sleep on a backpacking trip doesn't affect a person nearly as much as a poor night of sleep in everyday life, because when you're backpacking, you're (hopefully) free of stress, and the only decisions you have to make involve when to eat and where to camp.

So I lay awake for much of the night, looking at the nearly full moon and listening to an owl and some odd birds. I had left the fly off because it was initially clear, but then I felt a few raindrops. This happens a lot in Colorado. Individual clouds sometimes carry a bit of rain, and will sprinkle you for a minute or two and then move on. In the dry air here, the raindrops will evaporate from a sleeping bag within minutes once the rain stops. So far I've never had to get up in the middle of the night and put the fly on.

Well, that cloud passed, but the sky continued to become more overcast. And then I heard thunder. I decided I'd better haul myself out of bed and put the fly on after all. And just as I was putting the last stakes in, it began pouring. So, two streaks broken that night.

At some point I was finally able to sleep, and I slept in and it was sunny and hot when I woke. I was sweating by the time I was done with my oatmeal, and I set out up the steep trail, which stayed beside a pretty, musically trickling stream the whole time. Mostly there wasn't much to look at besides the stream, but I did see a couple curiosities:

Tangled tree roots

A tail of something -- perhaps a ground squirrel -- sitting all by its lonesome

Up, up, up I went, at times struggling to follow the faint path, until I reached a junction with another trail, which took me up further. Like yesterday, it was a hot day, and I was sweating like a dog. At one point I put one of my dirty fingers in my mouth without thinking, then kind of rubbed my tongue on my arm, hoping any bacteria would come off on my arm, and realized how astoundingly salty my skin was.

My fingers were "dirty" to begin with not because of dirt, but because I had filtered a little water to backflush the filter with, since it'd been getting slow. I had begun this process by disconnecting the filter from my hydration bladder then realized, duh, I need clean water to backflush with, and hooked up the filter again and began filtering. Then I realized that water was leaking from somewhere. It was leaking from the connection above the filter -- where the "dirty" water goes in -- and was trickling down the tube and getting all over my hands and some had possibly gone into my pot with the clean water. Ugh.

The actual risk that there was something like giardia in the water was small, but considering the extreme consequences giardia can have, I never drink impure water. I could have tossed it, wiped out my pot and filtered some more, but I was reluctant to toss any water because it would still be a while before I got to another stream. So I boiled it.

So there I was, sitting on a fallen tree at noon, boiling a pot of water, when another couple walked by. Thankfully, they didn't ask why I was making tea in 90-degree heat. After boiling, I had to wait 15 minutes for the water to cool off so I could load my plastic syringe with it and force backward it into the filter. The good news is that the filter unclogged nicely and I was able to sip unimpeded as I continued hiking.

Finally I crested a ridge and came down into an open, high-altitude valley. Thank God. From here on, the hiking would be much easier. The valley was just beautiful, with lots of little flowers and wide-open views. Mostly of rainclouds approaching.

I look less like I'm smiling here and more like I'm grimacing into the sun. I hate having to walk, hike, or drive with the sun directly in my eyes. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. And then, when it inevitably started to rain, I had to deal with the rain on my glasses. Oh, hat! Why didn't I go back for you?

The path was faint here too, and it seemed I had the valley all to myself. A clear stream wound its way along the valley floor, surrounded by willow bushes. I walked and walked for almost four hours. Toward dinner time, I passed a burn area, which was fascinating. Some of the trees were burnt to a crisp, like the gleaming black shell of a tree below, while others were untouched, with many in an in-between state.

By 5:30 I was very hungry and tired and wanted to stop, but I struggled to find a campsite again. There weren't any flat spaces. As I continued, the trail reached its highest elevation and was about to descend into the trees once more, and finally some flat places appeared. I found a lovely spot on granite gravel with a view of distant peaks.

Since I was starving I decided to eat dinner before setting up the tent; however, after a half hour the temperature had dropped steeply and a howling wind had come up. It no longer seemed like a good idea to sleep on bare rock out in the open. I found a tiny patch of flat ground blanketed in pine needles between some trees and bushes, and set the tent up there. The plant life cut the wind speed by half, and the ground insulation would help keep me warm.

Once again it took me a while to fall asleep, and I was just barely warm enough to get a good night's sleep, so I let myself sleep in in the morning. Here is the view I had while packing up my tent.

I had to do a little downhill hiking before the trail would turn upward again, toward the ridge of the mountain range and, I hoped, the best views. Soon I was climbing again, and then the trees were getting smaller and fewer. Some lovely alpine sunflowers greeted me for the first time on the trip.

And then there were my highly anticipated views. Here, I am looking out across South Park to the distant Sawatch Range.

It was very nice up on the ridge and I would have liked to spend a couple hours up there exploring and taking photos. Unfortunately, about ten minutes after I got there, the thunder started. Oh, well. It was my fault; I had chosen to sleep in. I descended quickly on the trail that would make up the last portion of the loop, while watching the storm come in from the west.

It was a pretty big one. Often our summer storms here in Colorado are just patchy, on-and-off rain, with maybe a 20-minute spell of harder rain or hail. But that day, it rained for about five hours. I'd been wondering where I'd find water on the way down this trail, but I needn't have been concerned. It was everywhere. In many places, it was the trail. The rain created abundant little waterfalls, including here beside these bluebells.

It was cold. I went down, down, down, my shoes and socks becoming soaked, glasses spattered with raindrops, gloves damp over my hands balled in my pockets. I still had a fun time, finding little things to investigate or photos to take.

And then I came to a place where some logs had been set up to allow crossing of the stream on my right. I crossed and found that path, the faint path I had discovered a few years before that had first made me think I could bushwhack through this area to turn the U of trails into a loop. Why hadn't I used this trail when I started, a couple days before, instead of having to scramble down and up a couple of steep gullies? I'd simply... forgotten about it, or minimized it, my brain focusing on the concept of bushwhacking.

Now I followed it, further than I had in the past. It was a nice trail, if little-used, and it did disappear at one point but I found it again. In some areas, fallen trees had been cut to allow free passage, which confused me. If this wasn't an official trail, who was doing the trail work? It was pleasant hiking and I followed it so far, I could tell that over the next ridge it would hit that pretty dirt road that had been part of my first day's hike.

Well, I'll be. I had done two hours of exhausting bushwhacking on the first day, for nothing. Taking the mystery trail brought me to the same place in twenty minutes -- which just goes to show you how inefficient off-trail hiking can be.

But you know which was more fun? The bushwhacking, by far. If there's one thing to be said about off-trail hiking, it's that it keeps your mind engaged. Trying to find the best way to get where you want to go is like a little game. And sometimes, you find cool stuff you never would have seen if you'd stuck to a trail. (I have, in the past, found such treasures as full elk or bison skulls with the horns attached; this trip, the finds were somewhat underwhelmingly limited to the national forest boundary sign and the forsaken lawn chair.)

I had so much fun on this trip, in fact, that it made me eager to try creating more routes where there were none before. I like the idea of making discoveries and maybe posting some trip guides that might siphon some traffic away from the overcrowded, popular loops near Denver and onto some of these under-appreciated trails. On the other hand, I also very much enjoyed feeling like the place was my own little secret -- I saw only two couples my entire time out there -- and it's nice to have a few of those places. So I may post a guide to this area and I may not.

When I got back to my car, I didn't drive straight home. Instead, I went to find where those pretty dirt roads met the highway. There, I found a confusing sign, and as I was puzzling over it a forest service truck pulled up. There were two FS employees in it and they asked if they could help me with anything. I was on my guard -- as usual around government employees, I immediately felt as though I must be doing something wrong and was about to get a dressing-down -- but they were extremely friendly and chatty and talked at length about the area.

I mentioned the mystery trail and the cut logs I'd seen along it, and the man's face lit up. He had done that trail work himself and was clearly pleased that someone had appreciated it. Yes, that was an official trail, he said, and seemed surprised it wasn't on my map. They had plans for it -- for the whole area -- but it could take years to put them into place, especially given the obstacles that covid-19 was creating. We talked for quite a while and I got to ask all the questions I wanted. Now I feel as though I have a bunch of delicious secrets.

After our chat, I made my way home and set about cleaning up. My shoes were a mess. They had already been getting a bit elderly in terms of trail runners, but the bushwhacking had clearly brought them to the end of their life. The soles were worn through and the inner fabric was torn up. The new insoles I had gotten for the trip, however, were even worse. I had picked these up at the grocery store because my old ones were starting to get torn, but they were clearly not made for anything other than walking around offices and sidewalks. It looked like a dog had been at them. They did no better than if they'd been two pieces of bread I'd shoved in my shoes.

Wrecked footwear or no, I feel blessed to have had such a wonderful time on my little trip, and it's got me excited to do more backpacking this summer. I'll have to see what else I can come up with!