Monday, July 13: Sitting here on the bed at the Big Valley Motel at 6:30 MST with my legs stretched out and the computer on my lap. Got blisters on both heels. My legs feel like they’ve been beaten with a meat tenderizer. My left knee was cranky the whole day. And…my feet are stiff and lifeless. Hey, must have been a good day huh?

Let’s start from the start then. Got up at 6 AM, slammed some breakfast consisting of a couple bananas, an almond butter sandwich and some yogurt. Then Judy raced us over to this jeep rental place out in the middle of nowhere just off of Rt 285 to get our 4WD jeep rental for the day. Then Bill and I took off for the Rio Alto Trailhead that I couldn’t take the van on yesterday. We were fighting the clouds of mosquitos the whole time when we got there so we got out the deepwoods OFFF. Began the Rio Alto trail at just before 8 AM. Goal today was to connect the Hermit Pass to the Rio Alto Trail and all the riding I did yesterday to get to Marshall Pass. 

Now I knew this would be a hard hike, obviously when you’re climbing to 13K in elevation. I wasn’t able to put it into my “cruise control” mode because of those sutures in my right let - just did not want to chance taking long, loping strides for 16-18 miles of mt hiking today for fear of breaking some of the sutures loose. So I had to back off just a tad from my normal pacing. But that was ok. Bill was with me for about a half hour and then I noticed he wasn’t behind me after that. I needed to be swift and steady to get to the top of that pass and get back down before the predicted monsoon manifested itself in the early afternoon - this I’d gleaned from this morning’s weather forecast for our area. But hell, been doing this for quite awhile, and it’s always good to go high early and descend early to stay out of trouble up top. 

The trail is a tough one, with a tons of rocks and tree debris, mud, swamp, streams in the middle of the trail, creek crossings with no bridges, and bogs that can suck your hiking shoes right off your feet. I though I was keeping a pretty good pace, but my first time test, Rio Alto Lake, just never seemed to appear. I knew I’d need to reach it, at the most, by 2 hrs in to feel I had a serious attempt at reaching Hermit Pass. But I think I went through at like 2:10 or 15. Not good. And for some odd reason my heels were just giving me all sorts of trouble. I felt a hot spots coming on within 2 miles of hiking, and it just got worse as the day wore on. I even stopped and doubled down a hiking sock on my right foot to kind of lessen the friction. And it worked for awhile, but it didn’t last. Amazing because I brought my ultra-hiking shoes which fit so well and are really broken in. All I can figure is that I just have not hiked long for a good 2 months, and my feet weren’t used to it. 

So I went up and around the lake, which was a boggy mess, and where by that time my feet were soaked numerous times prior from stream Xings and marsh marching, so getting more mud and water in them was just par for the course. Got around the lake and began the second big push, up into a cirque below Hermit Pass and then a traverse of the headwall up to the pass. It looked even tougher than what I’d just done up to the lake, and that was a solid 6 miles of up from the trailhead. Had to X a couple small snowfields leading up into the cirque, and then some really rocky ledge type hiking. By the time I got into the cirque I was 3 hrs into the hike. And Hermit Pass lay far off to the east, way the heck up this long and winding trail of switchbacks. At that point I was really wondering if I could make the pass in time and then get down before the storm action begins. So I set a time goal on the thing, where I’d hike as fast as I could for 30 minutes and see if I could make the pass. Anything past 3:30 hrs into the hike and I’d be tempting fate with the weather, which was already beginning to change for the worse. 

So I got through the cirque and then scrambled up a big talus slope to try to cut off some of the switchbacking and save some time. Finally got up onto the final stretch of switchbacks at about 12,100 ft.  But let me tell you….they were long and went for nearly another 1000 feet. So I got going on these, and they really looked like a continuation of Hermit Rd, CR 160 that I’d done on Saturday up into Hermit Pass. The trail was wide, as if cut for ATC’s and 4WD vehicles. But you could tell that no off-road vehicles had been on the road for years. I did one set of the 3-4 switchbacks and looked at my watch. I was already past my deadline of 3:30 hrs in - I was at 3:45 hrs in. Time to think this one out my friend!

Now I know a lot of you who read my blog are competitive athletes, and you know better than most people what it feels like to kind of be on the bubble: DNF or Finish, that’s the question? It’s a crappy feeling letting it all come down to a simple decision like that. It’s a decision you may come to feel happy with, or one that you may detest, either or for the rest of your life. I’ve gutted out some pretty ugly finishes, and I’ve DNF’ed, so I know the feeling oh so well.  And there I was looking up at Hermit Pass about to make that decision. Do I take a chance and go for it, or do I cash my chips in and get down off the mountain? I kind of stood there in the trail accessing the logistics of going for it. 

By the looks of it, and judging by how fast I’d ascended the first switchback, I was guessing that the pass was at least 1.5-2 more miles up - round about another 1000 vertical feet. Kind of figured that would take me another hour to do. So that would put me at 4:45 hrs into the hike one-way. Now I knew I could hike down faster, but maybe just 45 min to one hr faster, so the total hike time best case would be a total time of 8:30-8:45 hrs. That would mean I’d get back to the trailhead at somewhere between 4:30-4:45 PM. The next thing to consider was the weather, and I could see from 12K up there on the flank of the mt that the weather was getting a bit dark off to the southwest. 

Those two factors really made my decision for me….I had to get off the mountain. I mean you look at it simplistically and it’s like, “I came all this way, and I just have this little bit more and I’m there.” But the one thing I’ve learned in the mountains hiking with some pretty smart folks is to use good judgement when you’re up high. I just didn’t want to take a chance with the weather. When It came down to it we should have been hiking at 6 AM not 8. So that’s on me. Just not enough time, and some sketchy weather and that’s all you need….to DNF in a hike. 

Yup, I just had to turn back, knowing that I’d leave this 1.5-2 mile break in the route that I wouldn’t be making up. And I can live with that decision. And it became even more evident to me that I made a prudent decision when I had hiked back down below the cirque and saw this big grey-black cloud bank amassing to the west over the mts - coming my way. Then suddenly I questioned why I even went as far as I did, what with Bill down there somewhere not knowing where the hell I was, and not having a key to get in the jeep if the weather went to hell. Not only that, if we got caught out on those crappy dirt roads in a storm deluge….well that could be real trouble in the rental. That’s when I really picked up the pace, this despite my worries of the sutured right leg. 

By that time my heels were raw from the soaking, the mud, and the rubbing, and my legs were feeling all the pounding of hammering back down from the headwall to the cirque valley. Got back down to Rio Alto Lake, and it was 6 miles of controlled pain from there on. God, that was the longest 6 miles I’ve done in years. It just never seemed to stop. I’d remember all these key spots, and where they were on the way up, and it seemed that I was lightyears from getting back to the trailhead. And it was all the more important when I’d take a gander to the west to look up at the clouds, seeing that grey-black cloud back creeping ever closer to this stream valley. Tried to keep the pace high, yet safe. Hell, I’d already used up my dumb-ass card with the bike accident. I didn’t need to toss in a header while hiking to the mix of dumb-ass moves. I like to call it controlled descending, a mix of going with the gravity jogging and speed hiking. You can cover a ton of ground of you just go into this ultra-runner mode. It’s much faster than just hiking. 

So I kept this going the rest of the way. There were a few stumbles, a few trips, and a few stumbles, but I made pretty good time. About half way down from the lake I noticed that the really threatening cloud mass had moved past this particular valley, so I felt some breathing room. By this time my legs were just these external parts moving independent of my thought. My hiking buds and I call this the “ROBO MODE”. You just hike robotically without thought because your legs are just totally smoked. The last 2 miles seemed like 10 miles. Plus…the mosquitos were out of this world. I’ve NEVER had this much trouble hiking at altitude with mosquitos before. Maybe it’s the wet spring and summer out here, but from 10K feet up, all the way down I was battling the varmints like nobodies business. It even affected my hiking, causing me to trip and stumble a few times as I descended while swatting bugs. 

Within 2 miles of the trailhead I saw this massive storm raging off to the west. It was just black, and that made me hike/jog even faster to get the hell out of there. Finally made the trailhead with a total hike time of 6:55 hrs. I stumbled to the jeep like a drunken soldier. Bill had gotten in the jeep by unzipping the rear window panel. As I looked out to the west I was wondering if we’d get out of there before all hell broke loose on us on those 13 miles of red dirt/gravel roads. I felt every bump and jolt in my low back as we scrambled out of there in the jeep on the Rio Alto Trailhead Rd. By the time we got to AA Rd, looked as if we would make it off the dirt road before the storm, but heck, back to the east in the Rio Alto valley it was getting just as black and ominous as what lay ahead of us to the west. We dropped the jeep off and had Judy pick us up and that was it. All around us it was raining and storming like hell, but here in Saguache, nothing until about 6 PM. I look like crap, limping and stumbling around. The legs are just shredded. 

During the hike, I’d been fantasizing about a pizza the whole day, and then we go to the pizza shop at 4 PM - and it’s closed. What? Are you kidding me? Yea, the places here just close when they want to, as if the business is that fantastic? So as a last resort in this little town we went to the grocery and I bought some roast beef and ham and made sandwiches. Judy made a salad and that was our dinner. 

So that’s the story. Did my best but sometimes the mt wins! Tomorrow’s ride should be fun, going over Marshall Pass. Yea, I need to get some legs and quick! Until tomorrow….I’m out.