SUMMARY:  Our pine-needle comfortable campsite gave me a great night’s sleep, but not poor Fixit. He ended up battling what we call “runny tummy” all night, and by morning he was feeling weak and wobbly. We had 11 1/2 tough miles of trail to do, so all we could do was start walking.

We faced hunting and searching for the trail among rocks and trees and swampy meadows, and had to go up a lot of steep hills which was rough on Fixit—he crawled and plodded and often just collapsed and lay down for awhile. There was nothing I could do to help.

Finally we made it to Hwy 70 and hitched a ride to Encampment / Riverside. We got a camping cabin by the river. Fixit is on the mend, I think, but we will need to stay another day and make sure.

DETAILS:  I had a very good rest last night (pine needles make a wonderful mattress!) and was zonked out all night long.  But poor Fixit was hit with a really bad “runny tummy” problem, and had to get up at least 4 times.  He did finally take some berberine to try and solve the situation, but by morning he felt weak and wobbly and exhausted.  Not a good start for the day.

We packed up and headed out, but the going was hard.  We had to search and search for each post/cairn.  And to add to the difficulty, much of the route was steep uphill on very rough terrain.  The steep uphills were very hard on Fixit.  He could barely walk up them, and began to frequently just stop and collapse, lying pack and all, on the ground, saying “I can’t go on.”  But we had 11.7 miles to go before we reach any kind of road (Hwy 70, to be precise) where we could find help.

To say I was worried would be an understatement.  At this rate, IF we even reached Hwy 70 today, it would be so late in the day that our chances of hitching a ride into the nearest town (Encampment) would be basically zero.  I thought back to 2010, when Fixit and I were in the High Sierra on the PCT, and I was sick with something “giardia-ish”, complete with nausea, runny tummy and feeling like I just wanted to lie down and rest all the time.  But knowing that I had no other choice, I just sucked it up and kept going, falling behind Fixit a lot, but still trying the best I could. If I had not done that, we would never have made it to our next resupply at Vermillion Valley.

So I ended up begging, cajoling, and finally even bullying poor Fixit, to keep him moving.  Every time he would lie down and say “I can’t go on”, I’d respond with, “OK, rest for a few minutes, then we’ll go for it again.”  I would wait 5 or 10 minutes (depending) and then start bugging Fixit to get up and get going.  At our midmorning Snickers break time, he refused to eat anything.  Stop ‘n Go came by and said, “You know, this hunting for cairns would really be FUN, usually, if we weren’t trying to make it to Canada!”  I said, “No kidding!”   Stop ‘n Go really had it nailed–normally this kind of thing would be a fun challenge.  But with Fixit sick and still a long way to Canada, it was not fun at all.

But on the bright side, I have to say that the scenery on this stretch of the CDT is amazing and beautiful.  The rock formations are dramatic and impressive, and the meadows are so intensely green that you almost need sunglasses to look at them.  Wow!

But those gorgeously green meadows are green for a reason–this time of year they are actually SWAMPS of snowmelt.  We just sloshed on through, still hunting for the elusive cairns and posts.  And since the meadows are relatively level, Fixit was able to walk through them OK, without collapsing.  And the berberine seems to be working–no more runny tummy.  It was obvious, however, that we dare not continue on the trail–we will have to make a detour into Encampment.

We finally reached Hwy 70.  The wind there was strong and bitter cold.  But one good thing was that I could see way down the road, so when I saw a car coming, I had plenty of time to get ready to try for a hitch.  Several cars just went on by; a couple of them stopped, thinking it was just me hitching (Fixit was too weak to be standing out by the road with me) but when they found out there were TWO of us, they sadly said they didn’t have room (which was true).  Finally a guy came along who lives in Encampment, and he gave us a ride.  He recommended that the best place to stay was actually Riverside, which is right next to Encampment, so that’s where we went.

We ended up with a camping cabin (I figured Fixit needed a BED, not the ground, so he could really rest) at “Lazy Acres” RV park.  We never had any lunch, since Fixit was not hungry, and we were worried about making it to Hwy 70, so by now I was starving, and Fixit said he thought maybe he could eat something.  So we went to the restaurant across the street and I devoured a big hamburger, while Fixit ate a little bit.  Then we went back to our cabin, which was right by the river, to have a good rest.  Fixit says he is feeling better–the berberine seems to have worked well.

There are quite a few CDT hikers staying here at Lazy Acres, as well as more of them in the motel in Encampment, and they’d agreed to get together for dinner, so I joined the “CDT crowd” and it was very jolly.  Fixit didn’t go, because he didn’t feel like eating any more, and wanted to just lie down.  But I had a very good time.  The consensus of all the hikers, who are WAY younger than Fixit and I, was, “Colorado really beat me up.”  Many of them, like us, had planned on going straight through to Rawlins, but realized they needed a break.  They weren’t sick, just plain wasted, and that made me wonder if maybe Fixit’s problem was partly just exhaustion.  Everyone is planning to take a zero here before tackling the rest of Wyoming.  I think we will, too.

Back at the cabin, it was so good to just lie on a bed and listen to the river murmuring by and the crickets singing in the trees.  Yes, I definitely think we will zero tomorrow!