The Colorado Trail: The Need To Know
Through social distancing, Legs and I have been hanging onto our original plans for this summer: thru hiking the Colorado Trail. With trail closures lifting and snow pack melting, we are sticking with our plans!
The Plan: Legs will hike the 486 mile C.T. SOBO from Denver to Durango. I will drive the camper with the dogs and meet him every four days or so to resupply. I will be staying in state parks or off grid in the mountains, hiking about 8-12 miles a day with the pups. When Legs reaches Durango, we will switch places and I’ll hike back to Denver NOBO! A huge advantage of the camper is that we can safely social distance by avoiding small trail towns, hostels, and hitchhiking. We also have a National Parks Access Pass which grants 50% off campsites at state parks, so that helps cut down on the total cost of the hike.
The Highlights: The C.T. crosses 6 wilderness areas and eight mountain ranges. The total elevation gain is 89,354. Below is a rough plan to summit 20 peaks, 18 of which are 14ers (peaks over 14,000 feet. It’s a common goal in most states with large mountains to hike all the 14ers in your state). All of the peaks are not included on a typical thru hike of the C.T., but can be reached easily from the trail. The chart includes the mountain name and elevation as well as the mile marker that the trailhead is at (this helps me find it on my navigation app) and the total distance it would take me to summit the peak and return to the C.T. round trip. I hope to summit all of them!
The Trail: The C.T. is overseen by the Colorado Trail Foundation and maintained by volunteer trail crews and individuals or groups that “adopt” sections of the trail. Although the trail takes up 567 miles of actual hiking path, a thru hike is 485. The extra trail comes from alternate routes that hikers sometimes utilize during heavy snow or ice, fires, or closed sections. I may end up taking one of these sections, the Collegiate West route, to summit more 14ers. The season to thru hike the C.T. is from July 1 – September 30 and can take anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks. Legs and I are both planning on coming in right around 4 weeks and Legs will be starting on July 1 to give us the whole season. The season is so short because the average elevation of the trail is around 10,347 feet. For some perspective, the tallest peak on the A.T. is barely over 6,000 feet. Hiking outside those months means dense snow pack and usually requires micro spikes and an ice pick, both of which neither of us wanted to have to carry.
The Hazards: The C.T. is definitely a different challenge than the A.T. Although temperatures shouldn’t be any lower than we saw on the A.T. (below zero degrees F some nights), the C.T. is at a much higher altitude and will require we acclimate before we start pushing big days. The C.T. is also much less crowded than the A.T. Only about 150 people per year attempt to thru hike the C.T. while the numbers for the A.T. sore above 3,000. That is good for us coronovirus avoiders, but bad for if we found ourselves in any trouble. As far as animals go, the C.T. is home to black bears, mountain lions, and moose. For all of them, it’s advised that you talk loudly to make your presence known, and back away slowly. Black bears will usually fall for the act and just leave you be. Moose are tricky and don’t scare as easily. If it charges, try and get something large in between you and the moose, if that’s impossible curl up in a ball until it leaves. And mountain lions are braver still, and more straightforward. If attacked, fight back hard. Sightings of mountain lions are rare, but do occur. One of the MANY reasons I don’t night hike…
For all you gear nerds I will be posting about my pack soon enough. Just as a teaser; it is literally less than half the weight I started the A.T. with last year (32 lbs with 2 L of water)!