Eighteen part: window to the soul

«So how is the CDT?» Beer slide He asked, his stable hands on the steering wheel while the truck accelerated the interest 70.

I did not respond to the beginning. Through the window, the trees and the earth gave way to the concrete. The buildings rose on the horizon as a mirage. I was going to Beer slideThe place to lick my wounds and rest my bones for a couple of days.

I was silent for a few seconds, hesitant. The truth sat heavily on my chest, and I didn’t know how to express it with words. What were supposed to say? That the path was not what I expected? What every day was felt like a slow and ground fight? What exhausted me, physically and mentally?

But I knew what I really wanted to say, under the question. He not only asked about the CDT. I was asking how it was measured to the PCT.

He did not.

«It’s a difficult trace,» I finally said. «It challenges you all the time. The minimums are deep already. The maximums … not so high and rare. It is different.»

I spent three days resting in Beer Slide’s apartment in Golden, in the Denver suburbs. I slept on the floor of the living room, cocoon in my comforter, I appreciated for the tap water, the solid walls and a roof that did not stir in the wind. The type of luxury that a path made you aware.

When Beer slide I was working, I did what I could by my foot. He had missed the first day off. That worried me. These three days were my latest bet, my last hope, or improved or walked broken. There was no middle ground.

I. Back on the way

Sunday September 15 – Grays Peak Trailhead

Beer slide And I got on black stillness before dawn. The cold had teeth, and the path ahead promised 3.4 miles of ground ground and 3,000 feet of climbing. Grays Peak was the highest point in the CDT.

The path was full of people. The distant specifications of front headlights moved along the path. Day hikers, bold and hungry for photos of the summit.

We moved quickly. Beer slide He wore a day package, and his legs were cooler than mine. I held mine for a while, but after thirty minutes, I asked to take the lead. I needed my own rhythm, slow, but constant. The pain on my foot was there, boring but manageable. Altitude stole my breath, but not my will. We go up and joke. We remember the camaraderie of the Sierra Nevada. I missed that.

At the summit, my first 14th, exactly three months on the road, we say goodbye. He turned back. I kept walking, south towards the horizon and what I expected beyond. I would see it again in two months, after arriving in Mexico. With a little luck.

I advanced only to Mount Edwards. His crest rose sharply against heaven, as if he were part of the spine of the earth. One side dropped into the valley below. The other was more indulgent. The path was weak but there. I moved through him carefully, keeping my approach to the rock under my feet and not in the empty air a few steps to my left.

Then, suddenly, two white ghosts appeared a few hundred meters below me. Mountain goats! My first. I wanted to approach, but the fight was too steep, the risk too much. I went ahead. Later, bordering the summit, I looked back, and there they were again. I climbed quickly and caught them in the camera.

The descent was punishing. The rocks bit my foot. I met Trapper and Super cold -Two hikers who had never met. We shared breakfast, but it was reduced: the sky was turning. The clouds rolled, dark and full of bad news. We were presented with two options: remain on the crest and walk through the exposed Argentine column, or taking the lower route, protected from the elements. The snow began to fall and the wind rose. We all choose the last.

At the bottom, I stopped for a stream next to a dirt road to eat and rest. The pain in my foot brought with it a cruel truth: all my efforts to heal had been useless.

I continued walking along the dirt road. The rain found me sometimes. At the crossroads to return to the crest, I stopped. The mountains above seemed bad, the ugly clouds with thunder. I could climb. Or I could stay low, cut through Montezuma and re -connect later. He felt how to cheat. But then, Lightning divided the sky and the applauded thunder, so close that it shook the bones in my chest. I stayed in the trees.

II. Unfortunate

The following days they ran together, blurred by pain. When the body was in trouble, he stole all the space that the mind had. The mornings were cold but clear. The afternoons broke up. The nights were calm, almost tender.

Even so, there were moments, small, breathing. A curious marmot. A hot meal after a long day. A few additional miles walked that they would make tomorrow seem friendlier.

The path rolled through Álamos de Álamos turning gold and orange burned. Its leaves trembled in the wind like a thousand little flames. They raised in unison, a burning choir against the deep greenery of the pines. I felt as if I moved through a fire tunnel: vivid, wild and fleeting.

I felt alone. It is not the peaceful loneliness of the open spaces that I looked for, but of the painful guy. Of the guy who dug when the pain exceeded force.

Leg, Syrupand SparksWho had not seen in a long time, spent an afternoon while I sat to have lunch. They said hello with easy smiles, but mine did not come. Not today. I could not pretend today. They saw him in my eyes, which I could not hide. The eyes – the window to the soul. They told him the truth that a mouth would not. They went quickly, respecting my need for space, and they wished me luck.

III. Give it a chance

Friday, September 20: Near Mount Elbert Summit, the highest peak of Colorado state

It’s 4:00 am. The hard and sharp sound of the alarm of my phone rang in the tranquility of the night. I sat down and checked the movements: I will deflate my sleeping pad, I put on my pants, socks and shirt, I put my picture in his dry bag, I folded my pad and pad, etc.

I left my store, turned off my lighthouse and looked up. The sky was cloudy, the moon just a pale blur behind a changing veil of clouds. The disappointment got into. Did it even be worth going to the summit if there was nothing to do with?

I didn’t care about the title, nor could I say that I had stopped at the highest peak of Colorado. That was not what I was chasing.

What I wanted, what I always wanted, was a feeling. One moment. To the type of impressive view could stir deeply within you. That feeling of standing above all, the wind cools on the cheeks burned by the sun, the fine hair in your arms rise with the cold. The aroma of the humid granite mixture with alpine air. The deafening stillness that dawn carried. And the way your eyes rose, not by the wind, but because of the pure beauty of everything. Colors that you had never seen before, stretched by a sky awake.

For that I came. That is all that mattered to me.

Something inside me told me to be, yet. «Give him a chance,» he said. So I did.

Little by little, I climbed through the last group of trees. I couldn’t see anything beyond the reach of my lighthouse. The wind picked up. I turned off my lighthouse and looked up once more.

The sky was cleaning. The wind was sweeping the clouds to the side like a broom that brushes the dust from the floor. In the dark, the silhouette of Mount Elbert emerged, bathed in the moonlight. Well below, a dispersed constellation of lights flash: the cities of Leadville and the twin lakes rest in silence at night.

Some of those lights moved, climbing the same path that had walked the day before: other hikers, their headlights swinging as distant stars. I must have been the first in the mountain.

Just below the summit, I found a shelter behind a mound of stacked rocks like a wind. I sat there, I protected from the wind but not from the cold, and I saw that the first light of the day took place. A golden orb crawled on the dark contours of distant spikes, throwing a quiet shine through the earth.

After a while, I got up and walked the last steps to the summit. When I arrived on the worn wood sign, something inside me opened from par. A wave of euphoria happened to me through me, and I broke in the tears, surrounded by the vast and silent beauty of the mountains.

For a few precious minutes, everything else disappeared: pain, doubt, the weight he had taken. He had won a little victory. And standing there, on the top of Colorado, I captured him with a photo: the biggest smile on my face, and the tears still cling to my eyes.