{"id":510,"date":"2016-07-06T04:38:08","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T04:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=510"},"modified":"2017-04-24T04:44:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T04:44:13","slug":"back-to-where-we-started-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/07\/06\/back-to-where-we-started-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, July 6 Back to Where we Started From"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>There was a lot of wind last night, oh joy! It dried all our wet stuff! So we were very happy hikers as we headed off along the trail, but very quickly I grew worried. The trail was headed in the wrong direction. It didn’t match my map.<\/p>\n

Then I was shocked to see a road down below.\u00a0 This should not be! \u00a0 It was a paved road.\u00a0 I could not see any paved roads on our route for this morning.\u00a0 Then in absolute horror, we realized the truth: Somehow we had chosen the wrong ridge again (different, but still wrong) and made a huge loop and had returned to Willow Pass and Hwy 125. We were very sad and upset, and it was all my fault, because I had been careless about checking map AND compass, and so selfishly stubborn about insisting I was right.<\/p>\n

So after some very grievous discussion, we decided it was back to roadwalking\u2014first to the little town of Rand, then a shortcut over to Hwy 14, which will return us to the CDT. We tried to camp along the road, but everything was swarming with aggressive, biting ants. So we went to nearby Russell Ranch, and they let us camp in their hay barn.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:\u00a0 <\/strong> The wind blew (often quite hard) all last night, and by morning, all our stuff that had gotten wet in the rain up on Parkview Mountain was dry!\u00a0 What a joy to get up to dry shoes, dry socks, and even a dry tent!\u00a0 We happily set off along the trail, thinking that our troubles were over.\u00a0 Even the many blowdowns we had to climb over didn’t dim our enthusiasm!<\/p>\n

But as we went along, I gradually became more and more uneasy.\u00a0 From what I could tell, looking at the map, we were headed the wrong direction.\u00a0 I kept checking the compass and wondering again, “Is my compass crazy?”\u00a0 Then down below, I spotted a paved road.\u00a0 Impossible!\u00a0 According to the map, there should be no paved road anywhere around here.\u00a0 The nearest one was Hwy 125, but it was on the other side of the mountain.\u00a0 Finally I was so worried that I stopped and said to Fixit, “I’m so sorry, but I can’t figure out where we are.\u00a0 I think you’d better check Guthook.”\u00a0 Fixit said “Sure” and he had a look.\u00a0 “Well, Guthook says we are right on the CDT” he said.\u00a0 So even though I was still uneasy, I felt more hopeful, and we kept on going, switchbacking down, down to the road, and when we stepped out of the forest onto the road shoulder, we discovered that….. we were back at Willow Pass.\u00a0 We had just done a gigantic circle and were back at where we started yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

To say we were both in despair would be an understatement.\u00a0 The thought of climbing all the way back up the mountain and trying again was just beyond what I could face doing.\u00a0 And Fixit was once again furious and disgusted with me.\u00a0 This was all my fault.\u00a0 I would not listen to him when he tried to be careful up on the top of the mountain, and I would not wait for him.\u00a0 He was absolutely right.\u00a0 All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and be miserable.<\/p>\n

But I dared not indulge in a pityparty for long.\u00a0 We had so little food left.\u00a0 I finally said to Fixit, “If we roadwalk to Rand, we can get some food, and then we can shortcut from there over to Hwy 14, which is part of the CDT.\u00a0 Then we’ll be back on the CDT, and we can follow it till it’s time to hitch in to Steamboat Springs.”<\/p>\n

Fixit was miserable, too, but he agreed, and we set off along Hwy 125.\u00a0 By 11:15, we had reached Rand, which turned out to be a tiny place with a gift shop and a small post office.\u00a0 It didn’t have a restaurant or a grocery store, but the gift shop did sell drinks and snacks.\u00a0The gift shop owner turned out to be supernice.\u00a0 Turns out that he helps maintain the little lookout house up on top of Parkview Mountain, and he was very encouraging and helpful. So I bought a bunch of snacks to see us through, and the owner told me how to find County Road 28, which would shortcut us over to Hwy 14 and the CDT.\u00a0 We also loaded up on water from the hiker\/biker water cache that is kept under the gift shop sign by the road.<\/p>\n

So we spent the rest of the day roadwalking, first along Hwy 125, then turning off onto gravel Road 28.\u00a0 All along the way we were passing lovely ranches, with deep green grass, many lakes and ponds and very contented-looking cattle.\u00a0 Pretty much every ranch had at least one “grasshopper” oil well.\u00a0 We’ve heard that the ranchers used to barely make a living, but now, with additional income from oil, they are doing very well.\u00a0 Sure looks like it!\u00a0 I am very glad for them.<\/p>\n

But we were constantly walking against wind that was so strong it made us tired just trying to constantly push against it.\u00a0 That was hard. But we kept plugging away, determined to get as many miles as we could to make up for so much lost time.\u00a0 At 7:00, we were seriously looking for somewhere to camp, but the road was constantly lined with barbed wire and “no trespassing” signs.\u00a0 Finally we spotted a place off the road that was NOT posted, and gladly started to set up our tent (we dared not cowboy camp; the clouds were gathering).\u00a0 But horrors, it turned out that the nice soft flat place was SWARMING with fierce ants!\u00a0 Hundreds of them rushed onto our packs and gear, and climbed up our legs and began to BITE!\u00a0 Ow, they hurt!\u00a0\u00a0 And they were everywhere!\u00a0 All we could do was scramble to yank up the tent (we lost one of our tent stakes in the process),\u00a0 and hurry back to the road, brushing biting ants off our gear and ourselves and considering what to do.<\/p>\n

I remembered that back down the road a little way, we had passed a ranch.\u00a0 Maybe they would let us camp someplace outside.\u00a0 Hopefully there would be no ants.\u00a0 So back we went, to the Russell Ranch, and walked carefully down the driveway.\u00a0 The ranch dogs had barked at us very fiercely when we walked by before, and we were wary.\u00a0 But we managed to make it to the front door without being eaten, and explained our predicament.\u00a0 Mr. Russell said he’d noticed us walking by earlier, and very kindly gave us permission to stay in the hay barn.\u00a0 We were very grateful!\u00a0\u00a0 At first we thought we’d just cowboy camp on the loose bits of hay that were lying on the ground, but oh bother, there were a LOT of mosquitoes;\u00a0 too many to dare go without the tent.\u00a0 But the floor of the barn was rockhard clay.\u00a0 How could we put in the tent stakes?\u00a0 Well, we ended up finding some wooden pallets, and tied the tent guy lines to the pallets.\u00a0 It worked OK.\u00a0 Whew!<\/p>\n

We crawled into our sleeping bags as the sunset lit up the sky, and I think we can make it into Steamboat Springs tomorrow, if we really try hard.\u00a0 And I vowed to myself, “ALWAYS check the compass!\u00a0 ALWAYS!”\u00a0 I do not ever again want to go through what we’ve gone through.\u00a0 We have lost a whole day of hiking, plus what we’d already lost.\u00a0 We could have been at Steamboat Springs already if we had not messed up so much.\u00a0 Well, to be more accurate, if I<\/em> had not messed up so much.\u00a0 But we are blessed to have a safe and good place to camp, and enough to eat, and good water to drink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 There was a lot of wind last night, oh joy! It dried all our wet stuff! So we were very happy hikers as we headed off along the trail, but very quickly I grew worried. The trail was headed in the wrong direction. It didn’t match my map. Then I was shocked to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions\/880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}