Day 81: Past Bowen Pass to Hwy. 14

Ed and I slept in (until 6:30 a.m.). It was SO COLD last night! As we were packing up, we met a lovely, young couple heading SOBO. The guy was from Evansville, Wis., which we know well! We chatted quite a while.

The first few miles were relatively flat and nice, although they wound through swampy areas and dead trees. But we loved the easy trail!

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Making Our Way to the Trailhead

After a while, the trail began to climb. A lot of the path was a ravine filled with rocks. Lots of motos, as they’re called, passed us. It was tough. But eventually we began going downhill, which was lovely.

A woman passed us who we had seen earlier in the day with a group of other women, heading in the opposite direction. Now she was alone, heading in the same direction as we were. She said she was slackpacking her friends.

Hwy. 40 Unexpectedly Becomes Our Destination

We began chatting about backpacking, slackpacking, etc., as Carly (The Hiking Diva) has a lot of experience. Carly told us our next piece of trail – the climb to Parkview Lookout –was perhaps the most difficult on the entire CDT. Storms were expected around the time we’d summit – and at 12,296 feet (3,748 m), that could be a big problem. But we’d heard there is a lookout structure there, which we thought we could camp in if worse came to worse. To which Carly replied, “Well, if you like rats.”

We decided that to be safe, we’d hike the roads to the next trailhead. Carly insisted on taking us along the highway portion for safety’s sake. But once we started driving to the dirt road, the wifi disappeared and we lost our route.

Things got crazier. Carly turned around to find a spot with wifi so we could again see our route. But instead of stopping at the Willow Creek Trailhead, where we’d had service before, she zoomed by, heading south toward Granby. We never had any service until Granby – quite a long drive – and by then, it was time for Carly to pick up her friends.

So Carly said the only thing she could do was drop us off at Muddy Pass, which was where we’d planned to be in three days.

Pivoting Once Again

Obviously, we’d had no intention to skip ahead so many miles – or any miles, other than a few on the busy highway near Willow Creek. But there was also no way for us to get back to Willow Creek. So we decided the best option was to start hiking backwards for the rest of today and tomorrow, then turn around and hike back. It’s not ideal, but at least we’d be hiking on the CDT the entire time.

I’ve now been in these circumstances a lot during this year’s section-hike. I’ve learned I can’t get upset about it, but rather make the best of it. We’d also heard that due to the Dollar Lake wildfire in Wyoming, at least 30 miles (48.3 km) of trail was closed in Wyoming with no great reroute, forcing hikers to skip ahead something like 150 miles (241.4 km).So these things aren’t uncommon.

Anyway, Ed and I made it about 7 miles (11.3 km) down Hwy. 14 when it began to rain. Two guys stopped and took us to the dirt road we were aiming for 2 miles (3.2 km) ahead. We set up camp at a big parking area with a kiosk about the CDT. It was REALLY windy, so we each had to help the other person.