Buena Vista
The plan for the next day was to climb Cottonwood Pass to segment 13, do segments 13 and 14. Mark was going to resume riding the Colorado Trail with me. We got an early start, and did a fairly breathless, cold climb on the road toward Cottonwood Pass. I was in a bad mood, I'm not sure why. Mark asked if I wanted to check the Databook and I snapped at him. I'm not sure why. It's hard to spend so much time with another person, and I had really enjoyed being on my own for segment 11. We took the 304 dirt road on the left and cut off a little bit of the climb, joining the Colorado Trail and avoiding some car traffic. It was a fairly tough dirt road climb. We rejoined segment 13 at about mile seven, not certain. It was nice riding, but I could tell Mark still wasn't feeling well. At one point I stopped to wait for him on a level section that was fun, and he skidded up behind me and seemed perturbed. The rest of the ride was brief; with some climbing and descending to Princeton Hot Springs, we were there by 11:00 a.m. The idea was to immediately begin segment 14, Chalk Creek trailhead to US highway 50. Mark was really not feeling well. Very quiet, resigned, seemed like he was having no fun. We got to a forest service road. I asked Mark if he was OK, and then we had a conversation about his current state and we both agreed that he was not recovering, he was feeling really bad and that the altitude was hurting him. It was an emotional conversation for me, I didn't want him to drop out, but I felt that he needed to for his own sake. I waited for him to make a decision and he decided to drop to Poncha Springs, hitch to Salida, figure it out from there. I offered to go with him but he declined, I said that I felt like continuing to ride the CT if he was okay with that, and he said he was. And that was that. It was a weird feeling. I think I had a little bit of signal and texted Lauren what happened, so she would know, and that she would know that I was continuing. The rest of 14 was not a lot of fun. I did see Bex and Joey, that was nice. At a water filter stop I saw some mushroom hunters with a cool mesh bag filled with mushrooms, super boletes I think they said. After that, segment 14 just got harder. It was super rocky, rocks everywhere, so many rocks that I couldn't pedal. I had to push up a lot of hike-a-bikes, I got rained on. My Garmin had declared a low battery warning, like it does everyday midday and I had taken my charging battery, put it in my mountain feed bag and connected it to the Garmin to charge it while riding. At one point I was crossing a creek, I tipped the bike up on its back wheel to cross a log bridge and the battery fell out into the creek! Panicked, I stepped into the creek with both feet and reached into the creek with both hands and after about 15 or 20 seconds I fished it out. I tried to dry it off with my mini towel, press the button a couple times to see if it would light up. What a mistake. The ride just kept being unpleasant after that. Up, down, up, down, rocks, rocks, rocks. Cows, cow shit, cow hoof prints. One steep, rocky descent was obliterated by cow hoof prints. At one point a cow blocked the trail. Then I got to Angel of Shavano trailhead. There was a search and rescue vehicle and trailer with quads on it, and a lady from SAR there, and we had a nice, short chat. She had seen a buck deer, and then the next time she looked I was where the buck deer had been. We talked a little bit about the next climb, she told me it would be a doozy. Then I had yet another hard push up and over, finally reaching highway 50 after a very rocky descent. I could feel my front tire going soft and I hoped I hadn't punctured it. It was getting late in the day, maybe 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. I really wanted to finish segment 14, coupled with the departure from Mark earlier, I felt the need to finish this trail segment and I did, but it took a lot out of me.
Crossing Highway 50 I began segment 15, Foose's Creek. I'd heard how hard this was going to be, a hard climb from 8862 ft to a maximum of 11904 ft, 3576 up, topping out at almost 12,000 ft. I was so tired that I went up the dirt road past some private homes to where the first public camping was, 0.8 miles into the segment. There was a pretty well used campsite to the left, broken glass, much evidence of fires, very little flat spots. Foose's Creek was rushing on the right hand side and I could filter from it. I had just passed Foose Lake, which looked like a small dammed thing for fishermen. I saw people fishing in it. The campsite smelled like fish. I should have taken a hint and kept going up the hill but I was so tired. I saw that there was a trail magic bucket opposite the site I chose, I peeked in and it was basically just some dry food for hikers. I filtered some water, set up my tent. It was very wet, it had been drizzling and the canyon that Foose's Creek is in is damp. This was my first camp after Mark dropped from our ride and I was feeling down, beat, tired, wet. All my clothes were wet. It had been drizzling during the afternoon. I was bummed about the battery, I made myself a dinner, and as I was filtering water my platypus bag that I used to press the water through the Sawyer filter burst, it split, I had been using it for at least 10 years. That was depressing. Then I noticed that the bowl that's integrated with my Jet Boil stove had cracked, I had improperly packed it in the Salsa dry bag, spare fuel can underneath caused the bowl to crack. So now I had a potentially dead charging battery, no water filter, and no extra bowl, just the pot that the jet boil comes with. I think I had a little bit of signal and let Mark know that I didn't have a water filter and asked if I could borrow his before he left. He was in Salida with, who else, Jake! I texted Lauren as well. I felt really bad about everything and I felt like dropping out. I hung my food in a bear hang, left the water filter and Jet Boil outside near my tent and went to bed. Headlights flashed across the tent as people looking for sites turned into mine, but thankfully didn't remain.
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