SUMMARY: We really had “town moto” this morning and hurried as fast as we could along the Deep Creek trail. But there were the usual suspects all along the way—lots of fallen trees, muddy trail, and tributaries to ford. But the canyon has wonderful cliffs, rock formations, and wildflowers.

Finally we got to Creede, which has even more spectacular cliffs! And we made it to church, with a youth group taco lunch after.  (Hmm—they were lucky we were the only thruhikers there). Before dinner, met a French couple who are also CDT hikers!

DETAILS:  We were very motivated to hit the trail this morning!  Creede ahead!  Food!  Maybe even church, if we could get there in time!  And the trail looks like it will be all downhill!

Well, the trail had other ideas.  All of the “usual suspects” had to take turns making for some tough going.  There were BLOWDOWNS of all sorts, ranging from 1) Step over  to 2) Crawl under  to 3) Walk around to 4) Swing under (actually, #4 is sort of fun–you grab the log and SWING underneath and pop up on the other side).  There were tributaries of Deep Creek to ford, which was probably good, because the trail was so muddy, every ford gave us a chance to rinse off our shoes!  Our hiking pattern went something like: Hike as fast as possible, come to an obstacle, figure out how to get around/through it, then back to fast as possible again for a short distance, to the next obstacle.

We were so deep down in the canyon that there was no nice warm sunpatch to sit in for breakfast, until 8:00 am.  Wow, were we hungry by then!  But this is a very pretty canyon, with dramatic rocky cliffs and wildflowers everywhere.  While we were eating breakfast, two ladies came by with 3 dogs, which came over to sniff at us.  Our reaction was, “Great!  We must be near the trailhead!” And we were–soon we reached the end of the canyon, where it opened out into a wide valley, complete with an airport, a VERY spiffy upscale RV park and a lot of new homes.

Along our side of the valley was the Rio Grande River, roaring a muddy brown torrent of snowmelt….with a bridge!  Whew!  We headed for town along the road, marvelling at the spectacular cliffs and canyons that form the backdrop for the valley.  What a setting!  We headed straight for the Snowshoe Lodge, got a room and had JUST enough time to take a quick shower and change into our “town” shirts before heading to the Creede Baptist Church, a thriving, happy group of fellow Christians.  The Sunday School was just wrapping up, but we had time to snag coffee and a scone before the church service, which was great.  The pastor was just starting a series of messages on the apostle Peter and how God changed his life–and can change ours.

And it turned out we picked the perfect Sunday to come to Creede–the church youth group was having a fundraiser after the service: AYCE tacos!  Oh yeah!  Fixit and I had a great time eating tacos and talking to the folks in the church.  Good thing we were the only thruhikers, though–I’m not sure the youth would have had enough “taco stuff” to feed a lot of hungry hikers!

Back at the Snowshoe Lodge, we did as many town chores as we could before just plain collapsing for awhile till around 5:30.  We were getting ready to head out and look for some dinner, when I happened to speak to the people in the room next to ours.  They are an older couple from France, and they are also hiking the CDT!  Like us, they took the shortcut down to Creede (they also found it to be tough going).   They said they had made it from Chama to Pagosa Springs on the trail, by taking SEVEN days of food and they also had a good GPS, and even then, they barely made it.  They showed us their GPS setup, which was basically a phone app that was WAY better than the Guthook we have been trying to use.  They arrived yesterday, but too late for the post office (only open from 10:-11:30 on Saturdays).  So now they (like us) will pick up their box tomorrow, then wait for a friend who is behind them on the trail.  We ended up having dinner with them and had a great time.

At the end of the day, we looked around Creede a little bit, and I have to say this is one awesome town.  Apparently there are not a lot of people here in winter, but in summer, literally thousands show up.  There is a local live theater company and a lot of interesting businesses.  We went back to the Lodge and crashed.  Back to the trail tomorrow!