About 9 mi into segment 22
I set an alarm for 4:00 a.m. I had trouble sleeping. The location I chose in a hurry, as the storm hit was as flat and as low as I could find, but I was laying on a slope in two axes. I was nervous about getting over Coney summit the next day, the storms probably affected my psychology. I normally eat a CBN gummy to sleep when I'm camping, I did, but I didn't sleep so I added two Advil PMs. I fell asleep at some point and then the alarm woke me. It was cold and wet and I was not comfortable waking up yet, so I snoozed it, then snoozed it again, then acknowledged it and got up at 4:30. I struck my camp, and while I did so a hiker passed me. I later realized I left my mini towel drying on a bush, oh well. I started pushing my bike with my headlamp to guide me, until the sun rose and I turned the light off. There was a surprising amount of pedaling, whoever laid this section out wanted to give the traveler a break, so the gradient isn't always so steep. I took some pictures of the beautiful views. I even had a little bit of downhill. The hardest part was the wall, I will call it. Perhaps it has another name. It's a large headland with very difficult switchbacks up onto it. That was a lot of work. I saw a hiker coming the other direction, from Durango, Bree was her name, just starting her journey. We wished each other well. I spent a long time about 13,000 ft, my idea the previous night that I could somehow summit Coney was wrong, I would have been up there for hours. I was up there for hours this morning, before reaching Coney. I took a selfie with a timer. Once over Coney I had a really fun descent, down to the intersection of jeep roads. I remembered this from 2013. I met Sophie, a hiker who had started very early and was playing music as she hiked last night, I also met Tom from Toronto and Alex from LA, they were the ones in front of me who went up into the potential storm when I decided to stay put. They said they had to make an emergency shelter. Sophie was cautious but also on her own, admirable.
Thus began segment 23. Segment 23 had a really fun single track descent that I immediately paid for with a very challenging climb up the right side of a valley, while Sophie and Alex and Tom distanced me. I remembered this climb. Saw moose down in the valley, pointed them out to Sophia one point. Filtered water at a nice waterfall. The trail is very narrow and there's very little opportunity to pedal or coast on a bike, so the bike pusher and the bike must coexist. This led to the inevitable damage to my shins and calves from my pedals. This continued all day long, the pins cut the skin. It's very difficult to avoid. Especially when the trail is so narrow and lined with brush. I should find out the name of this plant; there's this bush that borders the trails high up here, it's stiff and it doesn't really admit much movement. I finally crested that valley and repeated the pattern over and over, segment 23 rolls along at about 13,000 ft. Each divide is gained by pushing the bike, for me, I imagine some super humans are pedaling up here but I am not, not very much. and then I coast with brakes on down the other side, often the descents are spectacularly beautiful, rugged, in the sense that there is not a nice clear track for a bike tire, but rather rocks, holes, mud, water, pedal catcher edges of the trail, etc. I continued doing this, getting more and more tired, having slept little and started at 4:30. I was looking at my GPS and at the Far Out app, and I could tell that I was getting closer, but I could also start hearing thunder at 11:45 a.m.! These storms are so common and today, early. They are really a limiter to what you can do. There was thunder and lightning and rain behind me on another mountain and sun above me so I continued, even though my legs and my energy were starting to fail. When I hike-a-bike at 12,000 or 13,000 ft, I will push for 10 or 20 seconds, pick some object at which I will stop, will allow myself to stop, and then I will pause and breathe heavily, trying to get oxygen back into my body and my pulse to slow. It's really like Sisyphus, slow movement. Sometimes I look at my GPS's elevation profile to see how bad it will be, other times I just know I have to get up it. As it got closer to noon and then 1:00 I was scanning for flat spots in case I had to throw a tent out. This is a good habit. I had also filled extra bottles in the bag for my water filter at the last water stop, so that I could do a dry camp. It was getting closer to two, I had less than 4 mi to go to finish the segment. Once I finished the segment, I had an 11 mi downhill to Silverton where friends of Erik, Josh and Christine Fonner had offered to put me up. I have never met them before, and I was already so grateful. I was fantasizing about finishing segment 23, getting to Silverton, getting warm and clean and eating yummy food and being around people. I faced two final climbs; a climb, descent, a further climb and then I'd be at Stony Point road. Thunder had been behind me for more than 2 hours at this point. Then I felt my first drops. I quickly put on rain jacket and pants, I already had on my regular long sleeve hoodie top, my Houdini jacket, both of which are very thin, summer issue, I put the pants over the shorts I had and put my shoes back on thinking I would March through the rain to the end of the segment. Then lightning struck nearby and that was that. I was at 12575 ft, a low point in the trail, about to begin a push up to something above 13,000 ft, and lightning would be a high risk at the next rise. So, I threw out the tent and got in it, basically in a bicycling outfit with a raincoat and rain pants on top. I thought I would try waiting it out. The rain suddenly hit very hard and I hugged myself to stay warm and just waited. All my gear was still on the bike, I had grabbed the backpack and put it under the rain fly. I began shivering and I continued to wait, hoping that the rain would let up and the sun would come out. It was only 2:00 p.m. Lightning struck close by, many times, one time so close and so loud that the third sensation of touch was involved, I could feel the thunder, the percussive wave. It rained and then hailed, the hail piled up like snow outside my tent. I continued to shiver and wait. I don't know how long I did this but perhaps an hour. Finally, I was getting so cold that I said I would wait for a gap in the rain to grab my gear, then warm up. When a slowing of the rain occurred I quickly grabbed all the gear off the bike and brought it back under the rain fly and then shivering, I pulled off all the clothes I had and put on my warm and dry clothes. Capilene underwear, capilene/wool long underwear, wool long sleeve shirt, Patagonia puffy jacket, hat, then I inflated the Thermarest Neo Air mattress and pillow, the mattress has a reflective coating on one side that keeps some of your body's warmth from reaching into the ground, doing all this inside a one person tarp tent is not elegant, but I got the pad inflated, flipped it around underneath me, the pillow too, then pulled the sleeping bag and liner, got into them, pulled everything tight around me and dozed for a few hours. The rain and hail continued, and continued, and continued. I was tired, and it was a way for me to warm up. I didn't sleep, but I was definitely dozing. About 6:00 p.m. I realized I should do something for food and drink, so I squeezed all the water out of the water filter into the pot, making just enough boiling water for a two-man dinner, shepherd's potato stew with beef and then enough left over for some bone broth, which always makes me feel better. There's all these things I do at the end of a day in a tent that aren't really worth describing, but here they are. I sent a message to my wife Lauren on the Spot tracker, letting her know I was caught in yet another storm close to finishing a segment, but not close enough. I charged the tracker, I had already charged the Garmin during the ride, it starts to show low battery warnings at about 5 or 6 hours. Then I read. I'm reading Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, and waited for the food to rehydrate.
Soon I will eat a CBN gummy and then fall asleep without an alarm set. Tomorrow will not be a productive day, I don't think. One of the hikers told me it's supposed to rain all day, which is not good for my plans. (It didn't, I'm fact my next day, very little traveling was sunny, with afternoon sprinkles.) I will get on a bunch of warm and dry riding clothes with as much warm and dry protection as I can, finish the two pushes to the end of the segment, in the rain if I have to and then drop down to Silverton, pick up a box from the post office if I'm not shivering too much, and then find Josh and Christine. I imagine tomorrow will be a day off. Tomorrow is my birthday, I will be 54. I originally had fantasies of arriving in Durango on my birthday, but that will have to wait. At this point I still think I could get there by the 7th, four more segments, 2 days. There is this dumb idea, I could leave all the bags at the Fonner's, then do the ride to Durango in one day maybe, but then I'd have to come back and get the bags, and it would be a hard day. I think I'll just stick with the original plan, get to Durango when I get there. If I arrive on the 7th, I will still have a week of downtime before I have to start work. I will spend that down time working, on the van but that's another story.
After the storm abated, about 6:00 or 6:30 I heard "Is that Morgan?" outside my tent. It was Peppa. We talked about the crazy storm, he got caught on a high point in lightning and hail and had to crouch down and protect his neck from hail and hope he didn't get hit by lightning. He made it to the same dell I was in and the it his tent. He mentioned that he needed to go down to Silverton to resupply, because the weather had slowed his progress. He also said he had to fly out of Durango on the 9th and it was a pickle, having to go down to Silverton and still complete the Colorado Trail on the 9th, he might have to miss a segment. He'd have to hitch down to Silverton or walk down. We said good night. Later I thought about it and I realized that I have to go to Silverton for the wilderness bypass, and he doesn't. I have food that I'm not going to need, because I'll get a resupply in Silverton. I realized that I should just give Peppa my food, and that way he can continue and finish his CT, and I get to do something nice for my birthday.
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