The long and lush valley, starting at 6.2, extends for several miles up the mountain.
Mile ~9.5. Janet's cabin is small and to the left in this picture. Beautiful place. If you get the opportunity to stay here for a night, definitely take it!
Still plenty of snow in late July.
The view from the top of Searle pass.
The bunkers of Camp Hale, now home to barn swallows.
I stood in the Copper Mountain gearshop, loaded with pack and poles, and eyed the proffered box of bug spray wipes as if it might attack. The carton was the size of a kleenex box, and contained a small number of ultra-soft insect repellent wipes – eighteen, if I recall correctly. I shook the box, listened to the brick of wipes thump around inside its cavernous plastic home. The whole thing weighed perhaps ten soupy ounces, about half a day's food. "So... can I burn the box?" I asked the bored-looking teenage sales clerk.
The clerk bit at her gum in annoyance. I couldn't blame her – I'd already upset a display of jackets and another of power bars. It wasn't my fault, though; the store wasn't exactly laid out in a pack-friendly fashion. And as I had already hoisted my bright-orange, canvas, behemoth-sized pack to my back, there was no way I was putting it down again. "No, it's plastic," she snapped, then seemed to reconsider and offered me a compromise – "maybe you could recycle it."
The sales clerk, I thought, would not like Malawi very much. Trash collection there meant raking everything -- paper, plastic, metal, paint, rats, wood, dung, clothing -- into a giant pile, and then setting it alight. "Oh. So it's biodegradeable?" I asked, surprised. "How deep do you bury..."
The clerk's boredom was turning slowly to incredulous horror. "No. Look, you have to – you have to dispose of it properly. Like in a garbage can. Colorado law, or something."
I figured it'd be eight days or so before I saw another garbage can. I considered carting the weird kleenex box around for that long, then sadly handed it back, with apologies. "Maybe another time, then," I lied, attempting to back out of the store without knocking over or smashing anything else.
There's no denying it, I fear – my pack is huge. In the proud tradition of all 1970s backcountry packs, it consists of a lightweight metal frame supporting a giant canvas sack. No fancy load-management straps, few attachment points or pockets, no compartments. Just one giant sack, with a hipbelt. It's perfect if, like me, your idea of an organized packing job is to cram stuff in, strap a flap over the top, and hope that nothing too vital falls out during the day. Stuff sack for a sleeping bag? Who needs it! Cinching straps for a sleeping pad? Waste of weight! Though large, the pack isn't really all that heavy – twenty-one pounds without food or water. But compared to the packs of ultralighters, I might as well have been toting the kitchen sink.
Ultralighters are a strange breed of hiker, characterized by obsession. The most dedicated will cut short the long straps on their packs, halve their toothbrushes, snip the ends off their matches. They usually carry no stoves, and make do without a proper tent; their medkits consist of aspirin, two bandaids, and a little duct tape. Spork in one hand, half-pound tarp-shelter in the other, they stride bravely forth, rarely carrying more than fifteen pounds *including* food and water. They can also make between twenty and thirty miles a day (I averaged around nine.) Provided the weather is fair, and the ultralighter is both knowledgeable and in the good graces of lady luck, this all works fantastically well. They don't take many afternoon naps in wildflower fields, but that's perhaps a small price to pay: ultralighters have completed the CT in 17 days or less.
Ultralighters do have one weakness. They tend to experience twitching episodes upon spotting any outsized pack -- some go into veritable spasms and froth at the mouth when they see mine. Sometimes, their outrage is poorly concealed, more often they wear the expression openly. They usually stop long enough to proselytize. During the course of some six miles near the middle of this segment, I received no less than three light-is-right lectures; two of the passing ultralighters even stopped long enough to take apart their packs and show me their gear.
"And this is the combination rain jacket and waterproof ground cover," one told me, handing me a diaphanous slip of fabric, "which is a little heavy at two and a half ounces, but...." I handled it carefully, attempted to make appreciative and impressed-sounding noises. I'd seen similar ones in the sporting goods shop in Breckenridge for over four hundred bucks. That's three months' wages, back in the Peace Corps. "...but since I repackaged the hand-sanitizer from the original bottle into a tiny plastic baggie, I saved twelve grams, so that makes up for..."
The heck of the matter is: they're right. Light is right; of course it's best to carry as little as safely and sanely possible on a long trail. But 'safe' and 'sane' both seem to vary greatly from person to person. I guess I'll just keep nodding and smiling, oohing and awwing, while passing ultralighters expound upon the virtues of their craft.
Once I got past the zone of high untralighter density (miles 10 through 16, by my rough calculations), the trail was quiet and lovely. It descends from tundra to sagebrush over just five steep miles; you can have hail and gale winds and then be sweating in shorts two hours later. Camp Hale is down in the sweaty/buggy zone, and is near water, but abandoned beercans and graffiti discourage camping. The swallows don't seem to mind, though -- they've colonized the bunkers and stream back and forth.
Just after crossing the bridge near Camp Hale, around mile 19.5, you may come across signs stating that the Forest Service is felling trees that pose a 'hazard potential' on the hillside. I assumed this meant the removal of dead or sick trees which threatened to fall across the trail itself. But no. Entire hills of thick old pine were cut and scattered over the earth like a giant's spilled matchsticks. I guess those trees must have been plotting some particularly devious hazard.
Don't know why they just left all those trunks just laying around everywhere, though, instead of disposing of them properly.
Like maybe in a garbage can.
Colorado law. Or something.
Kokomo pass. In Chichewa, this would almost mean the 'to be delicious or edible' pass.
Fields of wildflowers near treeline, after leaving Kokomo pass.
There sure were a lot of hazardous trees around.
Someone else piled up a bunch of rocks for use as coking ovens, to the right at mile 25.2, and didn't dispose of them properly, either. Honestly.
Guidebook update suggestions:
0.0
After crossing highway 91, you could either dodge through the golf course and then rank upon rank of condominiums, or stick to the trail, which starts right across Hwy 91, near a small house-like building. The latter route is much prettier, though it does put you through a few small climbs and descents, and it passes within a hundred feet of CM's main shopping area.
1.6
Reading the guidebook, you'd be forgiven for imagining that the section up to this point is endlessly confusing. It isn't. Just stroll along the trail, passing chairlifts and a couple buildings, until you find yourself a hundred feet from a large square, upon which face numerous restaurants and a gear shop. The grocery store – a small strange thing – is at ~12 o'clock as you leave the trail, behind the bar and grille which is right in front of you. There are maps aplenty, too.
1.7
Stay alert, as several roads and horse tracks cross the CT for the next several miles. At one road crossing, the only marker is a small, half-obscured painted rock. At another section where you follow a resort road for a couple hundred feet, the marker is missing – but if you take a moment and look around, it becomes obvious that you must head uphill, away from the condos. Otherwise, the crossings are fairly well-marked.
6.2
The meadow here is huge, with several interesting cabin ruins, and you'll travel up it for two and a half miles. The best campsites start about half way up.
10.2
The water here was running fine, even with no snow visible, due to showers over the past few days – several other unmarked streamlets were also flowing. However, caution: there be ultralighters here.
12.4
Elk ridge and the descent to Kokomo pass were beset by very high winds when I crossed – keep an eye on the weather.
16.6
The guidebook has a confusing description of this stream crossing. To put it more simply – when you approach cataract creek at the bottom of a long switchbacked descent, you can either cross it on a rickety and rather scary bridge to your left, or go fifty feet further around some bushes to a shallow ford.
17.9
Follow FS714 to the right.
19.2
If you haven't spotted the bunkers yet, try crossing this bridge halfway and then look back over your right shoulder. There they are! The databook says you can camp here, but there are beer bottles broken everywhere. I imagine things could get a little hairy here on weekends.
19.8
If you head up into the trees some, though, there are plenty of flat, dry, informal camping spots.
21.7
This stream was running fine, and several unmarked others in the few miles after it were as well.
The elevation profile for this segment was basically correct.
----> Onward, to Segment 9!
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