{"id":2412,"date":"2017-07-20T20:10:39","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T20:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/?p=2412"},"modified":"2017-07-26T23:30:17","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T23:30:17","slug":"the-colorado-trail-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thewachs.com\/wachsacrossamerica\/2017\/07\/20\/the-colorado-trail-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"The Colorado Trail: Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m an armchair thru hiker. \u00a0I’ve read dozens of books and blogs, trolled countless forums and watched umpteen documentaries and YouTube videos about people who thru hike the AT, PCT, CDT, CT, JMT and the PNT. \u00a0You may recall last year<\/a> we got to take a small walk on the AT where we\u00a0met several thru hikers and this only further piqued my interest in thru hiking. \u00a0If you don’t already know, thru hiking is defined as hiking\u00a0a\u00a0long-distance trail\u00a0end-to-end within one hiking season<\/em> according to Wikipedia<\/a>. \u00a0And all those acronyms above are some of the major long-distance trails in the US, namely the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Colorado Trail, John Muir Trail and the Pacific Northwest Trail respectively. \u00a0I am in awe of the folks who take on these epic adventures on foot completely self supported. \u00a0And while I think there is a tiny spec of a chance that I could physically take on one of these trails myself, I just can’t imagine being away from Steph for that long…so I remain an arm chair thru hiker. \u00a0But then one day last fall my brother calls me with a proposal!<\/p>\n

Joe: “I’m taking some time off work this summer and thought about doing some backpacking.”<\/p>\n

Huck: “Oh that sounds like a great idea…where ya thinkin’ about going?”<\/p>\n

Joe: “Well, I was considering doing a portion of some famous long distance trail like the PCT or the JMT.”<\/p>\n

Huck: “Wow….that would be really amazing!”<\/p>\n

Joe: “But then I realized that right here in our own backyard is the Colorado Trail…why not hike a section of that?<\/p>\n

Huck: “Right!!”<\/p>\n

Joe: “Do you think you and the boys would be interested in joining me?”<\/p>\n

Huck: “YOU BETTER BELIEVE WE’RE INTERESTED….SIGN US UP!!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so began\u00a0our 2017 section hike of the Colorado Trail adventure.<\/p>\n

Section hiking is simply hiking sections of major long-distance trails. \u00a0Some folks will string many of these together over the course of several hiking seasons to eventually cover the entire end-to-end trail. \u00a0Perhaps I could take this route to hiking one or more of these major trails. \u00a0But for now, we needed to focus on our upcoming trip and the first order of business was to decide which section or sections we should hike.<\/p>\n

We researched the trail and set our sights really high by initially picking section 24 and either of it’s adjacent sections in the remote and spectacular Weminuche Wilderness. \u00a0But as we began to consider logistics of these sections and our inexperience in section hiking we ended up choosing sections 9 and 10 that were closer to home, less remote and were more familiar to us.<\/p>\n

With the sections selected we now had to put together an itinerary. \u00a0My brother found a Leadville local who would shuttle us from the end of section 10 where we would leave the car to our start point at the beginning of section 9. \u00a0It was pricey at $35\/person and if we did it again we’d drop off all but one person at our start point, that one person drives to the end point and then we only have to pay one person worth of shuttle service. \u00a0Pre and post hike transportation finalized we now needed to figure out how to break up the 27 miles over several days. \u00a0Four miles was the most that I’d ever had the boys do with full packs at elevation when we did Heart Lake<\/a>\u00a0last year. \u00a0So we planned out 5 days of hiking, four\u00a0of which would be 4-5 miles and one long 9 mile day. \u00a0I laid this out with the help of a CT guide book I’d borrowed from the library that detailed good camp sites and also this really cool tool called CalTopo. With this free online tool I was able to label a topo map with our camp sites and then create a multipage PDF file with detailed maps for each day which I printed in full color at my local Kinkos. \u00a0You can check out our custom map below and if you want to dig in deeper, click the little “Open in CalTopo” link in the upper right of the map. \u00a0I was blown away by this tool!!
\n