An Epic Averted

Running on the Colorado Trail

The Good: Running the CT 10 miles from Kenosha Pass.

With the big San Juan Solstice 50 miler race coming up, I am desperate to get in long, tough training runs. Given the amount of snow we've had this year, it's hard to get up high this early and not find snow. Never-the-less, we decided to run segments 4 and 5 of the Colorado Trail, 31 miles of mostly down hill single track running between 8 and 11 thousand feet. Our group was five: Chris, Mike, Tressa, Joe, and myself.

The weather wasn't great as we left the car at Kenosha Pass, but the trail was reasonably clear. We got off on the wrong trail due to map reading errors (i.e., we didn't read the maps) and we wasted 4 miles before getting things right. Once on the right trail, we made pretty good time through the beautiful Lost Creek Wilderness.

The excitement started just before the Lost Gulch trailhead; roughly our half-way mark. We had encountered a few stretches of deep snow on north facing slopes in the trees. Going was slow, but not too bad. Climbing out of Lost Gulch, we again encountered serious snow and detoured up onto the rough but sunny slopes of Pt. 11130. We bushwhacked back down to the trail and finally ran along the north side of a sunny, 99% snow-free valley for about 8 miles making up a lot of lost time. I'd gone from feeling pretty crappy at mile 10 with visual migranes, general lethargy, indigestion, and so forth, to feeling pretty good at mile 25. We reached the end of the valley and rejoiced in the fact that we only had 8 miles to go to the cars.

The Bad: Postholing near Lost Gulch.

If it were only that easy! Leaving the valley meant getting back into the trees and the deep snowpack. The climb up to the crest of the Kenosha Range was easy enough, but demoralizing in the snow. But dropping down the back side was where things got interesting and scary. We were on a steep, tree-covered north-facing slope. The snow was knee to hip deep sugar with a half-inch of unstable icy crust covering the top. Our progress slowed to less than a mile an hour. With only two hours of daylight left to cover seven miles, that was a problem! Furthermore, due to communication errors, we ended up each making our way down the slope separately.

Finally four of the five of us reconvened and reflected on how serious our situation had become. I was the only person with a headlamp. Joe had a lighter. We had a couple of maps and a GPS. Most importantly, we were missing Mike and he and I were wearing shorts. None of us was particularly prepared to spend the night out and it was already getting pretty cold.

The Ugly: This is what postholing for miles through icy crust does to your legs.

Weighing our options, we decided that our first priority had to be getting as many people out of danger as possible. We gave up on the trail and headed north toward the drainage of the Bluestem Creek on the theory that the south-facing north side would have less snow than anywhere else. Fortunately, this turned out to be correct and we bushwhacked along the creek for a couple miles through dense blowdowns and loose side-slopes. At least we were moving fast and losing elevation.

We discussed options and decided to get back to the car, call up friends with more appropriate gear and mount a rescue if Mike didn't beat us back. Things looked grim. Suddenly we heard a shout from behind us and there was Mike standing on a rock 100' up the slope. A tremendous weight was palpably lifted off our shoulders. We would all survive this, despite how unpleasant it might be. Mike was covered in blood from the knees down, product of all the icy crust he'd been breaking through in shorts. His first words to me were "I need a camera". Mike was clearly okay.

The rest of the trip out was no fun, but at least uneventful. We made good time down to the Payne Creek Trail where we headed south for a mile or two and regained the CT. The elevation was low enough now that most of the snow was gone and it was a reasonably simple three miles from there down to the car. Daylight was gone with a mile and a half left, so we limped in under the power of my headlamp.

Our 31 mile, 6-7 hour training run turned into a 38 mile, 12 hour epic almost resulting in a Situation. Chris has written up an excellent trip report with a lot more details and thoughts on the trip. From my perspective, we did a number of things right and wrong. First and foremost, becoming separated was a potential disaster in the making. If we and Mike hadn't independantly made the same, correct decision to head for the easier ground, it would have been much worse. Once the situation became clear, we made a lot of quick and correct decisions. Not having the 10 Essentials with us could have been a real problem had we needed to spend the night out there (which was a distinct possibility). We've become complacent that trail runs are somehow different from other mountaineering ventures. Just because we're running doesn't mean we're not in the wilderness and shouldn't be prepared!

More abstractly, we failed to remember that May is the worst month in Colorado. There is not enough snow for skiing, but still too much for hiking. I've fallen into this trap before and apparently it didn't stick. May is still winter in the high country. On the plus side, I felt pretty good for the latter half of the run and got in a great time-on-feet training run. I feel pretty confident now that I can handle 50 miles in the San Juans in six week's time.

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