The Morgan Creek Fire is burning on the CDT which means we have to detour around it. We are making sure to hike as much of the official CDT as possible and complete a continuous footpath from Mexico to Canada, so the detour means we hiked a lot of extra miles on roads and side-trails through this stretch.
Day 74 – West of Mile 1461.1 – Into Steamboat Springs
The Morgan Creek Fire is burning on and around the CDT in the vicinity of Steamboat Springs, and there is no official detour around it. Therefore every hiker seems to have found a different path around the fire and into Steamboat Springs to resupply. We opted for the route which would allow us to do as much of the official CDT as possible. This meant we hiked to the trail junction where the CDT is officially closed, hiked 17 miles down a few trails to a highway, and tomorrow we’ll walk North on the highway parallel to the trail until we cut over on dirt roads to meet up with the trail right where it is open again. In total this will be a lot of extra miles, but fire detours are part of thruhiking. On the bright side, some of today’s detour was absolutely gorgeous! In particular, the area around Luna Lake and Lake Elbert made the detour worthwhile! We saw a ton of deer on the detour too… So many that we started calling it the “deer-tour”. The deer-tour also included a few miles through a recently burned area which was difficult because of fallen trees. As we got to lower elevation (under 7,000 feet) we saw several snakes. Two were bright green and seemed harmless, but one was a very large rattlesnake! That’s only the second rattler we’ve seen on the CDT. I am feeling sick today with something like a cold/flu (don’t worry — I’m Covid vaccinated), so the hiking was hard for me. But, when we finally got down to the highway we quickly hitched into Steamboat and grabbed burritos before finding a hotel. The hotel was affordable and it had a hot tub! Double win!! We showered for the first time since Lake City, which was 23 days ago! Then we ordered Chinese food and had a very relaxing evening in the hotel room before falling asleep. -T
Day 75 – West of Mile 1478.3 – Road walk
We had a nice morning in Steamboat Springs. We resupplied at a great grocery store, had a tasty breakfast, and even bought some new shorts. We then stopped at the post office to mail home our pants, our waterproof socks, and our mid-layer. It is starting to get hot, and we will be at lower elevations. We grabbed a burrito to go at around 2 pm and then hitchhiked back to where we left the road yesterday. We walked the road all day. We walked past the tiny village of Clark, which had a general store with wood-fired pizza. So we had pizza for dinner! Yum! Tomorrow morning we will walk past another village/store in the morning. Having food/coffee/beer available so often makes it feel almost like hiking in Germany! Around dusk we started to see a lot of deer and two foxes! -R
Day 76 – Mile 1489.6 – Back on the trail
This morning we were slow to wake up because Renee is also feeling a little sick (she’s Covid vaccinated too!). Fortunately I’m starting to get better, so I made us coffee and breakfast and then we resumed walking the road on the fire detour (I usually do most of the cooking, but Renee did it while I was sick). A few miles in we passed a very expensive roadside shop where we took a 2 hour break and stocked up on snacks for the day. The detour then changed from a paved highway to a gravel road, which was better but still not a trail. On the gravel as we left the highway we passed a house where the owner gave us beer and tequila. Nice! On the gravel road we saw several motor-sporters, including folks on dirt bikes, ATVs, and ORVs. Motors are popular in Colorado! Everybody who drove past us was very nice. We saw a ton of deer from the gravel road, and even two moose! Now our total moose count is up to five — soon moose will surpass bears (6, but we haven’t seen one since New Mexico). Finally at about 5:00 we intersected the CDT at the point where it was no longer closed for the fire. Woohoo! In total we walked about 40 miles of detour to cover 22 miles of closed trail… At this rate we might not make it to Canada before 2022 🤪. It feels wonderful to be making forward progress again, and the trail is actually easier to walk on than some of the dirt/Jeep/ATV roads which have big rocks and can be super steep. We called it a night at a great flat campsite. -T
