For the last 9 years, I have gone on an adventure during the summer, with my siblings. Something I never pictured being a part of my life as an adult, in fact past completing my time in Boy Scouts, I don’t think I even had an interest to do it again. But somehow the last 9 summers have been spent backpacking over 400 miles through the Rocky Mountains. It’s interesting how we change over time as adults and the things in our life that change, and you don’t even realize that it’s happening until some time has gone by. I’m not a selfish person when it comes to vacations, so it still feels weird to me after 9 years taking a trip across the country for a week without my family, my wife and kids. But my son, and probably my daughter since she was little when this all started, only know me to take this trip every year and think that’s normal for me. Kind of like my son not even knowing his Daddy that worked in motorcycle dealerships for many years, they don’t even realize who I was back then. Things I never thought would be me, but my family knows me for who I am now and that’s what’s normal. To be honest, I don’t love backpacking. I have never claimed to love backpacking. I can barely even make it through a single night sleeping on the ground, let alone a week at a time and at high elevation… But I can appreciate what comes from backpacking through areas like we have, and that is the beauty of nature first hand. Although I’m a photographer and I believe I’ve captured some beautiful photos of The Colorado Trail in my years, pictures will never fully show how truly amazing the views and the experiences are. Realistically, not everyone can hike a trail like this, and most never will. So hopefully sharing these pictures and little bit of story of our experience will give you an idea what it’s like.
Year 9 on The Colorado Trail for me this year, and every year is a new experience. From re-learning how to backpack, throwing out most of what I thought I knew about it, and slowly discovering what really works. To the drastically changing scenery and climates from year to year. Although this trail is one continuous path from Denver to Durango, it can be hot and dry one segment, to cold and rainy the next with patches of snow mixed in. So we have slept in the cold and woken up to ice on our tents, and we have spent days sweating and getting sunburns. Truly a little bit of everything.
This year we hit the highest elevation point of the entire trail, and spent the most consecutive days at high elevations. Which is a good thing these sections are this far into our adventure, because we’ve learned how to cope with the elevation and intense climbing. Don’t mistake that for saying we’re good at the elevation and climbs, just that we’ve learned better how to deal with them. For me, living at just over 600 feet above sea level is a big jump to spend nights sleeping over 12,000 feet and exercising all day at 13,000 feet! All the running and training I can fit into my life, doesn’t seem to fully prepare me for the intensity of this hike at the high elevations. This year our hike started at a higher elevation than some of our highest points along the trail in earlier years. And it’s crazy to think back 6-7 years when we were hiking at elevations around 10,000 feet and I remember thinking I can’t breathe and my body does not like being this high! So it feels like quite an accomplishment to hit 13,271 feet of elevation and not feel like I was going to die! We spent all week this year quite literally hiking through the clouds, as you’ll see in some of the pictures. But the high difficulty did not come without reward, every day was full of endless views from the tops of the mountains. This wasn’t a year of being buried in the forest or tucked into valleys where you’re just looking at the mountainside next to you all day. This was a year full of panoramic views and beautiful mountain ranges in every direction. I took more photos in this section than most of the previous ones, but I just couldn’t help it, every corner you turned was another amazing view. It may have been a bit challenging, but at least we had amazing scenery to make it all a little easier.
All of the beauty, and all of the accomplishments didn’t come without some effort and struggle on our part. I’m pretty sure we experienced rain every single day on the trail. Rain doesn’t sound so bad, it keeps the temperatures down so we’re not having to spend all day hiking in the heat. But hiking all day with wet socks and feet isn’t the most comfortable. And having to stay bundled up in rain gear all day isn’t the most comfortable way to hike. But the worst part of non-stop rain is the rush to setup camp in the rain, followed by packing up your tent and sleeping gear wet…. Basically, it makes everything just a little bit harder on you, on top of everything else we’re dealing with out on the trail. One positive is that going to sleep at night to the sound of rain can be very peaceful!
Every year brings surprises, and not all good ones, which is unfortunate because of how much coordination and planning is necessary to orchestrate 7+ adults taking time out of life and traveling to meet and make this trip happen. Getting to town and everything seeming okay with our small family reunion, until one of us ended up with altitude sickness shortly before leaving on the start of the hike. So the first couple of days we were down a sister… Thankfully a couple days of resting and preparing and she was ready to jump on the trail with us and complete the rest of the week of hiking. Just a reminder that no matter how much you train and prep, there are some things you simply can’t control and have to be ready to deal with when tackling a trek like this.
Spending most of a week sleeping on the ground is very difficult for me with my history of back issues, but now that we’ve almost completed this trail I’ve started to figure a few things out to at least get some good rest some nights on the trail. But the lack of sleep and proper rest, can quickly get washed away every day when we step out onto the trail and see the amazing sights that The Colorado Trail has to offer. There are some mornings that were simply unbelievable to wake up and look around, waterfalls nearby, towering mountains in every direction, beautiful trees and flowers, and even the occasional wildlife. We spent one evening with deer wandering around between our tents, un-phased by us being in their dinner spot! It just never ends with the small surprises we’ve seen over the years. Including my first bear sighting of the entire trail! Thankfully from a distance, but unfortunately shooting with a 50mm lens, I couldn’t get a great picture of it. But just the experience of watching the bears literally running up the mountain faster than we could run downhill, making the mountain terrain look like an easy jog for them. They quickly disappeared over a ridge, but I’m thankful we got to witness their strength and power in their natural habitat.
