7/18 - Along the Cochetopa Creek   Miles Today: 32.7 Total Miles: 132.1

When we last left off, I was not at all happy with this trail and I was considering different activities for the remaining two weeks of my vacation. Well, a couple of things occured to me last night. First, if I quit and start hiking around, this journal will quickly start to read like a Bill Bryson book. Second, there are a couple of really cool places that, if I returned to Telluride, would basically not be possible to visit on this trip. Third, I remembered that I am not a wuss.

But I will be completely frank, if there was an easy way to hitchhike around this next section I would have done it in a heartbeat. From what I could tell, however, it would have potentially been a five-ride hitch to get to the town of Creede, and around the road walk. I was still pretty miserable about the whole thing when I arrived at the road and had to make my decision, but in the end I decided to push on. And I am happy to say that pushing on was unquestionably the correct decision. No, this part of the trail was not great and the views were all but nonexistent, but I really enjoyed myself today.

As I mentioned, the first 10 miles were old jeep roads with lots of rocks and up and downs that really make hiking no fun for me. On the other side of 114, however, things were slightly different. After hiking through a pasture, I found myself on Forest Service roads rather than jeep roads. This is a fine distinction, but these roads are generally in a lot better shape, smoother and graded better than jeep roads.

And so the day went, up FS-876 and down FS-864.2A. Sometimes there were views, often times not. There was almost never shelter from the sun, which beat down on me unrelentingly throughout the entire hike. The water sources were barely more than trickles, and all of them had the distinct flavor and odor of a cow patty. I would only drink when I was really thirsty, since doing so otherwise would cause me to gag.

Nothing really of note happened today. I did manage to fix a broken hiking pole with a piece of barbed wired, which I was quite proud of. This is a bigger deal than it sounds since my hiking poles are used in setting up my tent, so that when I fixed the pole I was quite happy that I didn’t have to worry about my shelter for the night.

I also ran into a CDT hiker this afternoon. Cantelope had to jump around a bit because of heavy snow in these areas, but he is doing well and we had a good time talking and hunting for water until we went our separate directions.

My sprits really soared tonight, however, when I found a perfect little campsite right on the banks of the Cochetopa Creek. I filled up my water and I realized just how WARM than the river was; not great for drinking but perfect for BATHING! As I sat in the river, I felt as if I was washing off inches of salt from my body, my arms, and especially my face. It was incredible, I sat there in the river and even found a mini-waterfall to massage my sore shoulders and feet. This bath completed my 180º turn-around from my mental state just this morning.

Tomorrow, its up to the La Garita Wilderness area, one of those cool places that I didn’t want to miss. If the weather holds, I should be able to summit San Luis, a 14,000 footer, before 2 PM. Otherwise, I’ll probably camp nearby and summit first thing on Sunday morning. Life is great!

- Chomp

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