This is the first bed I have slept in since Pagosa Springs back on May 30th. I have forgotten how luxurious a simple bed is. Normally, I would be up at 5:20am and on the trail, hiking by 6:00am. But . . . wow!! I decided last night I wasn’t going to abandon this cushy life so quickly and stayed in bed until 7:00am! I wasn’t asleep all that time. The internet in the hostel was super fast and a joy to use. I thought I would use it to find how to tape my foot with KT tape for top of the foot pain and Plantars Fasciitis. I quickly found the videos on YouTube and watched them with the sound turned off so I wouldn’t disturb my roommates. I grabbed my supply of KT tape and moved to the men’s restroom. There I taped for Plantars Fasciitis on the bottom of my foot and for “Top of the Foot Pain” on the same foot. My foot didn’t look Iike a mummy, but it did have a lot of tape on it.
Down in the dining and living area of the commons there were about a dozen of us. We had a fun conversation that ranged over many topics. Everyone was making and eating their breakfasts and getting in their cups of coffee. Most people weren’t planning to leave until between 10 and noon. I like to get an early start. Today that would be defined as a 8:10am start.
The Shadow Cliff Hostel and Lodge sits less than 100 yards from the Rocky Mountain National Park border. The CDT goes right by the hostel then loops up into the park for about 22 miles. There is an alternate that is only 4.7 miles that skips RMNP. A fire roared through the park in 2020 and decimated this whole side of the park. It came within 100 yards of the Hostel and is starkly visible out the windows of the hostel that face away from the lake.
Many CDT hikers were planning to leave their packs at the hostel and “slack pack” the loop in the park, then spend another night or grab their packs and move up the trail a bit and camp. However, we found out the park service had closed the second half of the loop due
to falling burned trees and a landslide. Raider and Pitch tried to hike it yesterday and got caught by the park and were escorted back the way they came. This discouraged everyone. Those planning to hike it changed their plans. There was a real concern regarding giving CDT hikers a bad name for trying to circumvent the rules. Everyone just resigned themselves to hiking the alternate and continuing northbound without seeing the park.
It has been taking about a mile or two for my foot to stop hurting in the morning when I start hiking. Today was the worst so far. After three miles the top of my foot was still frustratingly painful. Then it donned on me that tape job on top was causing rather than relieving pain. I stopped on the shoulder of the highway and removed the KT Tape. Ahhhhhhh. Instant improvement.
Once off the highway bypass route and on the trail I was hiking with Quiet, a retired geneticist who worked breeding and altering Cyanobacteria for different purposes. I was in the middle of reading the audiobook “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir (The Martian) about a bacteria in outer space that causes humanity trouble. He has read it a couple of times and loves its accuracy about science issues and techniques. This got us into discussing books, politics, science and a wide range of other topics. It made the miles slip underfoot.
I covered 20.0 miles for the day and camped in the woods by a trail intersection. The mosquitoes were beyond belief. Once my tent is up it really doesn’t matter because once I am inside for the night the netting keeps them out and I go about my business.
About a dozen hikers passed me after I was inside my tent. I am in the bubble.
Just a couple hundred yards behind the hostel is RMNP and the devastation from its fire in 2020.
Scorched earth fire. Burned the soil too.
Due to closures had about four miles of highway to walk
This is the Colorado River way up in the Rockies
With nothing to hold the rain water, it pours off the hillsides. This ditch used to be the CDT. Too deep to walk in now after just two years.
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