Tag Archives: wrongwaygang

Is It Even Thru Hiking? Groucho’s SLASH Flip Flop CT 2020

Leave a reply

I was feeling restless, even after having completed a 4500 mile bike tour this spring and early summer. I mean, the tour itself was stress inducing… rather than contemplative expansiveness of previous journeys, travelling this year was filled with anxiety. Between the explosion of COVID and increased awareness of Black Lives Matter, there were a lot of factors mading the Days of Death tour less about personal meditation and more about social awareness and action. I totally support of and engaged in mutual aid, anti-racism. I also have mental health, just not all of it. I needed some mountain meditation – not to escape issues, but to walk with them.

I live in Leadville, so the Colorado Trail seemed appropriate. I hiked it in 2017 with my friend Atrain and his dog Ekho, covered many of the miles on my 2018 CDT thru, and hiked a modified Collegiate Loop last summer. The logistics were easy and familiar, and Sara needed a ride home from DIA and agreed to drop me at Waterton Canyon so I could start walking.

The miles were fast between Waterton and Breckenridge, but I definitely wasn’t in hiking shape. Climbing up over the 10 Mile range, and then again up Copper Mountain to Searle Pass was, um, hard. In 2017, going NOBO with Atrain we ate acid and flew up the 10 Mile climb, only to get hard, freezing rain on the way down into Frisco. Miles of memories overlapped as I traversed the familiar terrain between Copper and Tennessee Pass – meeting Futuredad and Huck on that section when I was hiking the CDT in 2018, and inviting Hot Legs and Digeridoo to CDT SOBO TRAIL DAZE the same year. I got to Leadville just before the Labor Day weekend, and decided to hide out. Then there was the early winter storm, and we got 11 inches of snow. I ended up taking 10 zero days!

Harpo suggested I could flip flop and hike northbound out of Durango..and maybe dodge some snow. She was kind enough to offer a ride down south…

Surprise! There was still plenty of snow in the San Juan mountains, especially leading up the Kennebec Pass. BUT I’d never flip-flopped a trail before, so now I guess I’m officially a wavy hiker. Is it even thru hiking? Who knows…

The walk into Silverton was beautiful as always. I raced the Colorado Trail Classic a couple weeks before; what took me 12 hours on a rigid single speed mountain bike (Molas Pass to Durango) took 3 days of walking. Reaching the San Juans felt like coming home – seeing the signs for the shared CDT/CT corridor made me realize I’ve been on this trail, or part of it, every summer for the last 4 years. I got an easy hitch into Lake City and slept by the river, resupplying and hitching back out the next morning. I love the walk across Snow Mesa, just north of Lake City… an expanse of high alpine meadow that stretches into the horizon, with the San Juans framed to the south. I finally ascended San Luis – a fourteener just off trail that I walked past twice before – summiting at 10pm on a night with no moon, seeing a panoply of stars and the Milky Way like a smear across the sky.

I was making good time and getting into my rythym. As I got service for the first time in days, I got a text message from my Reno friend Mikey, who had just finished installing an art project on the east coast. He was driving thru and wanted to check out Leadville. I’d be at HWY 50/Monarch Pass the next day… I told him to scoop me. I stayed with Mikey for a couple of weeks on the Days of Death tour, so I was excited to show him our small city in the high mountains. He picked me up the next morning – after I saw a huge bull moose in Fooses Creek – and we and headed to Leadvegas.

Mikey and I had a great few days in Leadville and I was sad to see him go. But the mountains were calling… I did a short slack pack with Jack the dog from Timberline trailhead to the Fish Hatchery and knew I had to get back out. The following day I picked up from the Fish Hatchery and headed south.

I hit Mt Elbert on the way, and traversed to South Elbert, descending via the Black Cloud trail and slept at the empty Twin Peaks campground. I had walked this section before and the traffic was terrible on HWY 81, but I arrived at night this time and under a full moon. The road walk was strange and beautiful. In the morning I explored the connecting social trails between the Twin Peaks campground and the Willis Gulch trailhead, where I started up towards Hope Pass and the Collegiate West route.

Collegiate West was scenic as always… and this time included a night hike under an almost full moon as I traversed the miles up to Alpine Tunnel. Seeing the high alpine terrain lit up in ghostly light was spectacular. The next morning I began the descent back to HWY 50 to connect my footpath. I cut down the forest road at Boss Lake so I could check out the new Butterfly House hostel and pick up a resupply package at the Monarch Mountain Lodge in Garfield. I walked down the old railroad grade that parallels the highway to intersect Collegiate East where I had left off… the road was flanked by aspens exploding with fall colors, the road itself a golden ribbon of fallen leaves.

Collegiate East was way more beautiful than I remember from my modified Collegiate loop last year. Timing is key. Tho there was no free coffee at the Princeton hot Springs store (ugh COVID again), everything was pretty, pretty hard, and surprisingly devoid of humans. I actually walked the whole road section out of Princeton, which I’ve trespassed before because wtf Christian camp, u gwan make me walk all the way around on a road with no shoulder?

I headed north past Princeton, Tabaguache and Chavano (the local Sawatch 14ers). I slept one night overlooking the faint lights of Buena Vista glowing like embers in the clear air. I woke up a day later at the top of a ridge with a hunter asking me for directions. From there, I headed over Waverly mountain to the Belford / Oxford traverse and descended into Missouri gulch, picking up a couple mile roadwalk to Sheep Gulch trailhead, allowing me to reconnect to the Collegiate West route. I ran over Hope Pass, trying to get to the Twin Lakes General Store before they closed at 6. I made it, and Bob bought me some rolling papers and 2 for one (end of the season) Bobo bars. I ended up night hiking for a few hours and sleeping near the Mt Massive trailhead… it was a long day with a lot of elevation; I slept well.

I was getting close to home and I was getting excited. But there was still one last challenge – the Mount Massive Ridge. It’s a spectacular and difficult hike. I headed out earlyish up the Mt Massive trail and cut northwest off trail about a mile in, following the topos up to South Massive. It was as hard as I remembered, and as beautiful. Following the ridgeline I drank some coffee at South Massive, and continued up and past the Massive summit, entering the rock problem area. Reminding myself of the first time attempting this ridge and how crazy scary it was – this was still physically hard, tho mentally easier as I moved through a lot of class 3 scramble, loose talus and pristine alpine meadow.

Around 2 pm I had just summited the last 13,000 foot peak on the ridgeline, and rather than walk all the way to Hangerman Pass, I decided to cut down Rainbow Lake and intersect the Highline Trail back to the Fish Hatchery. TBH I missed Jack the dog and was ready to be home. My housemate J agreed to meet me somewhere above the Fish Hatchery and we’d hike down & they would give me a ride home. Not all human powered, but a good portion of it… and a extra 100 miles or so on my CT journey, including a few new peaks.

I’m not sure if I found what I was looking for out there. It was a nice & meditative walk, punctuated by interesting and dynamic visits to the (smol) city. The more I explore how to get in & out of Leadville, the more it opens up. Personally, I feel like I’m trying to decrease my orbits and settle into home…

On Anti Racism

3 Replies
Arriving in Seattle to massive social uprising responding to police brutality allowed me to see just how poorly police treat peaceful protesters. Who are protesting police violence…


It is a strange time to travel in the American West.

Right now I’m bike touring. I started this journey in the first week of March; there was still snow on the ground (a lot of snow) in Leadville, Colorado where I live. I froze my ass off getting to Reno by April 4th for a bike race that never happened, which is about when COVID really started hitting. This engendered conversations about how to proceed, whether I could continue or if it was better to return home, and what was going on in the world; there was a lot of talk about consent, community care, and how we can keep each other safe. I decided to continue forward, practicing social distancing and always masked if interacting with workers.

I rode north through the Paiute lands around Pyramid Lake, ran out of water (but got snowed on) in the Black Rock Desert, cut through Alturas in the northwest corner of California and Roseburg in rural Oregon. I continued to Coos Bay for a night on the coast and up through Corvallis, Beaverton, on to Olympia, Washington and finally to Seattle, where I write this today.

The landscape of the American West is achingly beautiful. I have spent much of the last 7 years exploring it on foot and bicycle. Wandering the warm ridges of the Pacific Crest Trail, or the frigid passes and ice cold rivers of the Continental Divide, the scenery does not disappoint. 

What I also see is an imperialist system built on the stolen labor of Black and Brown people. I see the ongoing genocide of indigeionous populations; theft of their land, water, culture and identity. I see exploding houseless populations in every city denied access to mental and physical healthcare, even as we laud the arrival of the world’s first trillionaire. I see, as we ‘open the economy’ in the midst of a global pandemic, poor people are forced to work in unsafe conditions for poverty wages; meanwhile financially mobile Americans can’t even wear a mask as a basic acknowledgment of care or respect for their grocery checker.

I feel extremely fortunate to help Sign Savant lay out letters for BLACK LIVES MATTER on Pike street in CHAZ (then the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, now CHOP). This is an example of helping to amplify voices of color – we used our professional skills and access to funding to support artists of color as they filled in the letters with their designs.

This is a stark example of racial and economic injustice. Economic necessity dictates that poor folx need to work, regardless if they feel safe, while rich communities can effectively shield themselves from the COVID virus. I question if the ‘stay at home’ order really only applies to poor people, since I have seen so many affluent people out recreating with their trailers and campers, ATV’s and boats – they simply move the barricades from the closed state parks and set up. And police have been instructed not to intervene.

The people not wearing masks at the grocery store, out recreating in closed state parks, and protesting (loudly and fully armed) the stay at home orders and masks are overwhelmingly white. Yet the populations most adversely affected by COVID are Black and Brown.

The most disturbing, and perhaps most graphic example of systemic racism is in policing. As people started getting stir crazy during COVID lockdown, protesters took to the streets with AR-15s screaming at impassive police and clearly annoyed healthcare workers. These protesters were unwilling to participate in a social program to protect populations most at risk for infection by COVID. Despite the overt aggression and potential for real public harm, these predominantly white protesters were treated with respect and deference by the police. 

Compare this to protests against police brutality – protests against the literally THOUSANDS of murders committed by police in communities of color – and the tear gas comes out. In 98 American cities, police used lethal weapons disallowed in actual war against peaceful civilian protesters. Even as protests resulting from the murder of George Floyd were underway nationally and internationally, police in Atlanta murdered Rayshard Brooks, another Black man. This is what white supremacy and institutional racism looks like.

This isn’t easy to write. I’m so mad I’m grinding my teeth. This needs to stop.

I’m a cis white guy from a middle class family. My upbringing was stable, I have a college education and no debt. I travel for 4-5 months a year, sleeping outside, yet have a stable place and often a job when I return home. All of these things are a result of my white privilege.

Seattle is a beautiful place… it’ll be more beautiful when people of all colors feel safe here. When we house the houseless & feed the hungry, when communities are enabled to care for their own people, only then we will all be free.

Time and time again I have had conversations with friends about how this privilege is manifest; it’s the ability, support, knowledge and financial mobility to engage in an adventure like hiking the PCT; or access, language skills, and technology to engage with public art organizations in Seattle. 

Again and again, I hear white people around me denying they benefit from this privilege or deny that white supremacy and systemic racism exist in America. 

These white friends tell me they don’t see color, they aren’t racist, they grew up in the south, they aren’t responsible for the history of enslaved people in America, they have a black friend, that everyone is welcome, that everyone is free. This, friends, is bullshit.

We need to use our power and agency as white people in a racist society to actively combat racism. This includes doing things that make us uncomfortable as we confront racism in our everyday interactions. This also means finding ways to engage in positive conversations about race and privilege with white friends, while taking time to educate ourselves about these issues and their history in America. The hard part is it’s a long road ahead; the beautiful thing is that we’ve already begun the journey, and there is no going back.

The Wasteland

1 Reply

People are more confused than scared in the rural west. As COVID 19 spreads and the quarantine becomes more serious, many are trying to figure out what’s going on. Groceries and gas stations are still open, along with the liquor store. Restaurants are doing take out. Things are alive under the surface of this frozen world – people are finding ways to escape the paralysis.

Empty shelves in every grocery store. Strange how people express fear & panic. There are still full baskets of oranges & avocados, and anything gluten free is still available. There’s no meat or milk left, no toilet paper, no bottled water.

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

The streets are empty. An occasional single human walking in the dusk. The cattle trucks are running down the highway, the trains still roll the tracks. I look at social media; a whirlwind of opinion & self promotion even as the media falters juggling bits of incomplete information. I look at the world outside & it seems still – more quiet than normal, as if reflected in ice.

Still snow above 8000 feet, and it’s still winter in the west. The last icey finger has followed me from Colorado to Utah, chilling my bones and waking me up to another morning of snow. The cold and desolations mirror the empty streets in town.

Rather than fear, I feel a sense of wonder at the strangeness of the world. Both because and in spite of COVID 19, the world is reborn, reimagined; the light casts different shadows. I haven’t had to use my voice much – silence is engulfing me, the distance between people ever greater as language fails and words fall out of thin air, muffled by a thin blanket of snow. The world is whole, outside, caressed by rushing wind… I’ll follow that wind to the end, into the canyon and across the Basin, asking for its truth.

Nothing nothing nothing.

What am I doing here has become a prescient question – more essential than existential. It’s a time to question my motivations, looking for what this journey can uncover both internally and in the world I move through.

The barren west, the Plague

1 Reply

It seems strangely appropriate traveling the vast landscapes of the American West during the outbreak of the CORVID19 virus. We are forced thru quarantine into involuntary isolation – it’s not so different being alone in these bleak landscapes – water and wind sculpted rock, sage, pinyon and blackbrush scrub and the feeling of infinite empty space between everything. Social distancing at its finest.

Cemetery sunset on CO141, so far the most remote stretch of road I’ve travelled. Slept well with the dead, who were totes unconcerned with the plague.

Arriving to grocery stores with barren shelves, 6 foot distance laws, and government regulated personal space feels post apocalyptic. Yet within it service workers, post office staff, bike mechanics and grocery clerks seem unperturbed… thank the working class for their pragmatism and willingness to help in the face of a perceived crisis.

Hopefully the last snow as I leave Colorado for the canyon lands of Utah. A morning of frozen toes and the creeping anxiety that ‘this is the new normal’ before descending 2000 feet into the canyon, where it was dry 50 degrees & sunny.

Where will this adventure end? Is this the end already? I ask myself if it’s irresponsible to travel at this time – but there’s not going back at this point. Colorado is covered in snow, public transportation isn’t an option, and it’s unsure if return is worse than continuing. So the only way out is thru…

The sense of depth and scale leaves everything feeling far apart and unreal. I watched a motorbike cruise down this road and disappear long before they even approached this massive geological structure. When everything feels like forever, anytime is now.

Beginning Again

Leave a reply

Every journey begins sometime and somewhere… leaving Leadville I was lucky to have Rafa from LeadVelo ride out with me. We drank some coffee, had some laffs and hiked thru some snow on the way to Salida.

The first pass of many. Finally on my own after a loud night with Harpo at the Salida hostel. Climbing up into the mountains, ass in the saddle, head in the clouds.
The space out west, when you remove the cars, is so distant and wonderful. Subtle lines lead longingly towards distant mountains, the smell of sage, the cold clean wind.
There is no forgetting it’s a hard real world we live in. But trips Ike these force me to see reality as it it, without filters – which also allows escape from the voices in my head. Unmediated reality, things as they are.
Clouds caught by trees, faraway mountains… Colorado.

Lost then found then lost again

1 Reply

Favorite Southwest resupply options. I love them vegan chili ramens – which I haven’t seen since Said Valley on the PCT in 15. Also, once you get far enough spin every bodega & grocery has instant dehydrated refried beans – perfect cold soak food with Fritos!

Made a fancy custom rain cover for my fancy Brooks saddle… dodging afternoon rainstorms our of Taos.

Branching with the best of them in Cuba, NM. It’s interesting coming back after hiking thru on the CDT last year and seeing how my perspective has changed.

Steel horses and dirtbag cowboys. Riding through the American West reminds one of many conflicting narratives – black cowboys, soldiers paid cash for scalps, a million miles of barbed wire, shooting bison from the train, the violence and genocide that surrounds how these spaces are occupied & my privilege in being here. It’s a lot to digest, but the long views lend themselves to meditative thoughts and potentially change… tho there are still uranium mining railings outside Grants (the largest federal SuperFund site) and endless ‘NO TRESPASSING’ signs.

Good luck finding this or yourself – spiraling ever inward & outward simultaneously, away from and into an invisible center.

Winter in Leadville

Leave a reply

IMG_8610

Fresh tracks on the trails at Colorado Mountain College. Built and maintained by the local bike club, the Cloud City Wheelers, these trails are groomed a couple times a week – especially after new snow. I beat the groomer this time, but because it was 8 degrees the ride was still pretty firm. I can almost feel my toes now…

IMG_8701

If u need to ask why live in Leadville…. view of the Sawatch Range from Long and Derry Hill.

IMG_8801

The local snowmobile club grooms county and forest roads on the East side of town. Here Jack the dog and ski our way up CR3A on some fresh cord. There’s often nobody out there…

IMG_8847

Cold, also dead. The Evergreen cemetery is a few blocks for the house… there are some ornate tombs and headstones from the late 1800’s. The cemetery informally peters out into some pine forest with snowmobile and snowshoe tracks … you’ll often find random headstones with the markings worn off next to a tree deep in the forest. 

IMG_8885

Harpo – mane skiing down the pipeline. Lots of terrain to explore on the east side of town…

Borders & Reflections

Leave a reply

IMG_8454

Done & done – 2900 miles border to border, triple crown, and 11,000 trail miles down. What’s next?

IMG_8567

The southern terminus is a Crazy Cook, a nowhere place in on the NM/Mexico border, just a little bump on the panhandle 85 miles away from any roads.

IMG_8566

Life is harsh out in the desert. Everything is sharp, the sun intense, and the bones bleached dry.

IMG_8564

I was skeptical about the southern terminus, expecting another anticlimax. I’m happy we were there at sunset, where the light turned spectral over the western mountains. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but as the sun descended behind the hills there was intense pink and blue banding fading into a perfect butter yellow sky.

IMG_8563

We waited for hours at the road after walking the 85 miles back – no luck hitching, only a couple of cars. Finally we got a ride from border patrol – we didn’t bother telling him Huck was a Danish national on a dubious visa.

 

New Mexico

1 Reply

IMG_8312

Frosted flakes outside Chama, NM. And I thought it was going to be warm in the desert…

IMG_8380

After a morning of 100 or more river crossings, Huck and I decided to seek out higher ground. We spend the majority of the day wandering around the Gila Wilderness far from any trail, thru tall grass and wide open pine forest.

IMG_8421

Ghost bike for a cyclist killed by an automobile outside Silver City, NM.

IMG_E8341

Those desert skies tho – I’ve never seen any sunsets so chromatic, and it got better the further south we headed.