Chama to Pagosa Springs:
Miles: 66.9 miles
June 14th - June 19th, 2022
We’re in Colorful Colorado! And back in the San Juan Mountains - one of the trails top highlights. We had been in the San Juan Mountains in September 2021, but we were excited to see more of them, as we only spent a few days on our vacation last fall. We knew this section would be good, as our first night welcomed us with a full moon, and the next morning, a fox 15 yards from our camp.
With a week off and an increase to 10,000+ ft. of elevation, I could tell my body wasn’t feeling as strong as it did on mile 400 of NM. But cold water was everywhere, a rainbow of wildflowers showcased themselves along the trail and the views already seemed endless.
A single path trail was something we dreamed about in NM, but with all the tree blow downs, it made the trail more of an obstacle course: leaping over and crawling under, hoping our legs wouldn’t get caught on a sharp limb. Sometimes successful, often times not.
The skies kept us moving forward, as when we were above 12,000 ft., the sky went from blue to dark. No coverage in site for the next 12 miles. We made it to our campsite just in time. 2 elk grazed the meadow, with rain and winds surrounding us till the early morning.
The last day was the hardest: wet trees to climb over made the obstacle course even more dangerous, on and off rain, hail, and at the end of the day we hid from the lightning and thunder under stable trees. Only 0.8 miles from the Ski Patrol Warming Hut (our site for the night) we had to bail out to get to lower ground, following a road vs. the trail to get there. Once we arrived, what we would have been 360 degree views was nothing but fog.
We got down to the busy highway the next morning , and waited less than 5 minutes in the rain till our hitch, Chris, picked us up and dropped us off at a local breakfast diner in Pagosa Springs. Breakfast and coffee warmed us right up.
This section was the most difficult to date: physically, emotionally and mentally. It felt as though what we had experienced in the San Juans last September 2021 was truly just what we had gone there for: a vacation. This time, it’s almost as if the San Juan’s said, “Welcome back…to the *real* San Juan Mountains”.
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