Welcome to
Colorful Colorado

Embrace the Wanderlust, Embrace the Brutality

After taking a week off (with travels from Grants, NM > Albuquerque, NM > Santa Fe, NM > Chama, NM, Durango, CO > Chama, NM) to allow the snow to melt just a bit more in the San Juan Mountains, Ross and I restarted our Colorado journey on Tuesday, June 14th @ Cumbres Pass, CO. 

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Knowing that we would be traveling somewhere between 500-700 miles within Colorado, we also knew how difficult this state was going to be. Not only did Colorado have 500-700 miles, but the elevation gains now too. If you've ever been to Colorado, you know that it seems like the majority of the state is close to some mountain that's 10,000'+. 

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​Colorado brought us beautiful mountains, wildflowers galore and for the most part, not having to worry about water. Oftentimes, we would see exactly what mountain the water was falling down, intersecting right on the CDT trail, allowing us to scoop ice-cold mountain water whenever we needed it.  

Colorado wasn't all views and sunny days, though. Most days were filled with an air-sucking mountain climb each morning with monsoons taking over in the early afternoon. Sometimes, the monsoons would come even earlier in the day, making our uphill hike even more challenging and dangerous. Monsoon season was unusually intense in 2022 after an unusually dry year. The locals had said how much they needed that precipitation, and we respected that, but we couldn't help but think how difficult it was to be soaked with rain, pelted with hail and surrounded by intense dark skies while living between 10,000;-13,500' almost every day for 1.5 months. 

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When reaching the end of Colorado, we ran into a hiker named "Daypack". He was section hiking the CDT, and had just a few hundred miles of Colorado left till he was finished. After chatting a bit about our worries about not making it to Canada in time, he responded with the following: "If you can make it through Colorado, you can make it through anything". 

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Colorado was the state that challenged me to my core and made me more confident in myself as an outdoors woman and hiker. I will forever be grateful for the difficulties that Colorado presented me, along with the beauty it showcased throughout. 

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Colorado High Point Highlights:

- Colorado was packed with people, both in towns and on the trail. Being in CO during June/July was definitely a time for tourists to enjoy the state.

- We spent the 4th of July in the coolest town of Salida, where we hhung outwith our trail buddies (Business, Towelie and Cody) at the Butterfly House Hostel, went river rafting on the Arkansas River and danced the night away at the local pavilion on the river to a Grateful Dead cover band 

- I summited my first "14er" aka my first mountain that was above 14,000'. 

- The wildlife in this state was amazing! We saw well over 300+ moose, so many marmots, and mountain goats.  

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