Home » Adventures » Colorado Trail
After taking a bit of a hiatus from from exclusively being a homeless vagabonder, I was Back On The Trail™ in the Rocky Mountains, this time to hike the 500 mile Colorado Trail with my girlfriend. I had already hiked a good portion of this trail during my CDT thru hike, but it is a very beautiful area, my girlfriend had never done a long hike, and the timing/distance worked well with our schedule.
Due to a large snowpack, we pushed back the start of our trip by about a week. This delay allowed us to explore a few very nice spots in the greater Colorado area including Rocky Mountain National Park, Great Sand Dunes, and Rio Grande del Norte, among others. When we finally did hit the trail the snow provided a beautiful backdrop on the mountains, but never tripped us up very much either. The whole hike was very beautiful, and it was nice to be spending a lot of time in the woods again. The peaks were majestic and a rainbow of wildflowers covered many mountain sides. The air was fresh, stars filled the night sky, and a minimum of manmade noises reached our ears. And Mother Nature was unsuccessful in her couple of attempts to electrocute us with lightning storms. The large winter snow pack had generated numerous avalanches—many in areas that did not usually experience them—and their destructive aftermath was evident in several places. CTF volunteers had done an amazing job clearing most of the debris piles, but we still had to carefully scramble over, under, and through many heaps of knocked down trees.
Colorado Trail overview map
When the CT split near the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness we took the western route and were very pleased with our choice. That way was a bit wilder, spent more time above treeline, and was a highlight of the whole trail. The terrain was also some of the most difficult with many ups and downs, but we heard the eastern route had similar elevation changes but with less rewarding views.
Ample time in the woods also provides plenty of opportunities to take sultry pictures (as well as dipping your bread in oil).
Of course, the true reason to hike the CT is be off to see the stream trains, the wonderful stream trains of Durango. Choo Choo!! The gorgeous trip was a nice reward after enjoying several hundred miles of backpacking in the woods.
The CT is a very beautiful trail. Below is a sampling of a few of the pictures we took.
The CT is a fairly easy hike to work out the logistics of resupplying and shuttling. I still prefer dead tress for information, and Yogi’s Colorado Trail book did an excellent job of describing the trail towns and other needed information. I also like paper maps, and picked up a discount map book from Amazon, since the map sets the Colorado Trail Foundation sell seemed a bit expensive for a 500 mile trail. The maps I chose were not always the greatest, but sufficed since the CT is so well maintained, signed, and blazed.
We left our Subaru Outback among the many other Subaru Outback’s in Durango, Colorado with a trail angel that generously allowed us to park our car in front of his house. We got a one-way rental car and drove from Durango to Denver, where we rode light rail line to Mineral Station, and finally took an Über to Waterton Canyon and the start of the CT. At the end in Durango we had planned on walking the couple of miles into town to reach our car, but we were able to pretty easily catch a ride in from the parking lot at the terminus.
Towns are pretty well spaced along the CT and hitching is relatively easy in Colorado (especially when you have a cute girl in a skirt next to you). We did not bother mailing any packages and bought all our food along the way. I think six days of food was the most we carried — although it had to last us seven days due to a miscalculation by yours truly — and we took our time to enjoy the trail and did not really push big mileage days.
