Adventures in Onionism

A few days ago the ghost of Mark Twain (or Kurt Vonnegut, or maybe an actual living person that just looks exactly like them) came into the store and repeatedly yelled "You can't tell me what to do you f---ing son of a b----!" while calmly taking a lap around the store, and then he showed himself the exit. It reminds me of the time the guy in the neon blue unitard came to church and yelled, "I am a vegetarian," proceeded to spell the word "vegetarian," and left, but then remembered he'd forgotten his invisible hat and came back to get it. Hopefully I'm laughing at the funny actions and not at the person with mental problems themselves. My non-crazy friends came into the chicken fast-food place where I worked as a teenager and took their shirts off to see if they could still get service because there was no "No shirt, no shoes, no service" sign, and I laughed then, and when my buddy told me about how he dressed up in a Sasquatch suit...

Yesterday I went to REI to try on a pair of boots. Knowing how much I hike, maybe you'd think I already own lots of pairs of boots. Not so. I hate boots. Boots are for sucks. Boots are almost as lame as shaving regularly. Seriously, who would want to lift an extra three pounds with every single step for thousands of miles, and get blisters while doing it? Not that my trail-runners are always blister-proof, but wearing big-ol boots when you've got blisters is worse than wearing lightweight sneakers with blisters. I also hate the looks that I get when I tell shoe salespeople that I deliberately wear my running shoes a size or size and a half too big. This is actually pretty common amongst thru-hikers, but I've even had one salesmen try and bring me euro and women's sized boots to try and trick me into wearing something he thought actually fit me. I admit this would probably be a bad idea if I ever wore boots, but for sneakers it seems to give your foot plenty of ...

I finally got a job. I'm working at a gear shop called Any Mountain . In winter it's 90% ski and snowboard stuff, it doesn't have much local flavor because it's owned by a huge company that has 170 stores under 40 names and is majority owned by Vail Resorts , and until today there hasn't been any snow in the Sierras, so business has been very slow. The company is kind of cool because they've bought enough wind energy credits to power the whole business, and they have programs to encourage donations to Big City Mountaineers . Anyway, I mostly just float around the store, get left shoes from the back for people, and occasionally help people with camping gear. Whatever. I didn't like it at first, but I seem to hate it less and less every day (I've worked four days now), so we'll see. Sorry, no funny stories about crazy people yet. I went to a free advanced screening of the movie Juno . The soundtrack rocked, and the movie was absolutely hilar...

I ran my ninth marathon (not including ultras), the California International Marathon in 3:57 today. I was really pleased with the course. Optimal weather (50 ish degrees and chilly if you weren't running), no significant hills, just rolling tiny ones you don't even notice, reasonably pretty suburban Folsom and downtown Sacramento course, decent fan support, a big running crowd, but not so many that you get trampled/slowed down at the start, and pros running every five minute pace (3:45, 3:50, 3:55 total finishing time, etc.) with a sign making it easy to follow them and know how you're doing. The only reasons it's not perfect is that aid stations should be synced with mile markers so you have to think about even less during the race, and it's a little confusing when the porta -potties are parallel to and facing the starting corrals, because then the lines for the bathroom cross the starting area. I'm happy with the 3:57. I felt really good, not winded o...

Why is it that two-thirds of the employees at the Apple store in Emeryville are please-kick-the-snot-out-of me snarky and smug? Is it just the Emeryville store, or are all others the same? I'm sure that my own arrogance doesn't really help the situation, and maybe I should just take this as a lesson that I should be a little nicer myself, because if talking to me is anywhere near as annoying as talking to any of the "geniuses" at the Apple store (excluding Tony, who was plenty nice), then it's amazing I have any friends at all. To add to my own culpability, despite the Apple techs having found nothing wrong with my computer at all, it apparently works just fine now. Now I just have to live down the shame of the fact that I accidentally got the black MacBook, which costs $125 more than the white one. (There's actually a $200 price difference, but I thought that was because of the 40 gig bigger hard drive. But you can just pay $75 to bump up the size of the...

I finished yo-yoing the CDT a month ago. It took me 10 days or so to get "home" to Emeryville, and since then, I've finished one book (Stegner's Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs ), seen 7 movies ( The Bourne Ultimatum, The Queen, 3:10 to Yuma, The Passenger, Cars, Pan's Labyrinth, The English Patient ), inquired about/applied for 6 jobs (of which I seem to have landed an indeterminate number between 0 and 3, inclusive), gone running a handful of times, decided that I should volunteer at the Oakland Public Library or the People's Grocery community garden that's across the street but not actually done much about it, started eating vegetables on a regular basis, got a new computer (thanks Dad!), discovered that it annoyingly doesn't work with the wireless network in my house (but does work with other wireless networks), I've been on hold with Apple for the last 15 minutes, and I can't tell whether the robot voice is telling me th...

Do you find yourself overcome by crippling doubt every time you go grocery shopping? Specifically, do you just buy Fuji apples because that's what you're used to, but wonder to yourself whether there isn't some sort of uber-apple out there that's better in every way and could improve the quality of your life immeasurably by instantly throwing a party in your mouth to which all sorts of good flavors were invited? Well, welcome to my world. Only now I've taken measures to solve this problem. It started when I challenged the food-snob status of my roommate Marcus. I asked him what types of apples he liked, and he could only name a couple. So he went out right then and bought one of every type they had at Pak-n-Save. The next day we invited three friends over for dinner, sliced up the fourteen apples, and had everyone rank each apple according to four characteristics: sweetness, juiciness, tartness, and crispness. We used a numeric scale from 0 to 10. 0 w...

You might be wondering what my plans are now that I have completed the hike and have been "home" for a week. Succinctly, I have no idea what I'm doing for the next two months, I'm giving grad school another shot next year, and I'm probably not doing anything cool again until 2009. While I was on the trail with all that time to think, I definitely made plans for the future. I planned to come home and immediately start attending classes until the end of the semester in December. I'd get a new computer and make DVD's of my trip, put all my photos on my website, and do a huge brain-dump with all my notes that I wrote on the trail maps for the benefit of future hikers, then I'd take off on a big bus/train tour of nearly every place where I have some friends: Truckee, Salt Lake, Iowa, Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, North Carolina, then hitch across the country with a big sign saying "Mom's house" to San Diego, then st...

I spent most of the day yesterday at LAX with my sister gossiping about the rest of our family, and now I'm "home" in Emeryville. (For the sake of 300-something dollars a month rent, I'm splitting a room with Marcus until I go insane and we try and kill each other and then never speak to each other again.) I've now watched all the episodes of The Office that are available online, and now I have no idea what to do with the rest of my day/life.

We spent a day in Vegas hiking around Red Rock Canyon and eating a ridiculous amount at Hash House, then drove to Indio and crashed at Marcus' cousin's house. Sunday we hiked around Joshua Tree NP--visited an oasis, camped in the backcountry , and climbed around on some big rocks (the latter is what Joshua Tree is famous for). Now I'm in San Diego to visit friends and the folks, or rather, to finally get myself a second set of clothing.

Thursday we drove through Sedona, nearly vomited after eating a Burger King sandwich with "warm buttery-tasting bread," and hiked the popular trail up the west fork of Oak Creek Canyon. The leaves were changing and the canyon was spectacular. We drove into Flagstaff and saw Into the Wild . I was very happy that Sean Penn didn't ruin it, and of course, I absolutely loved it; I totally identified with everything in it, including all the on-location scenery. Yesterday we visited Petrified Forest NP and Walnut Canyon NM and gave a sort of crazy hitch-hiker a ride to Vegas, where we're crashing at my buddy Nielsen's house. I say sort of crazy because when he told Marcus he just got back from 10 years as a marine in Iraq, Marcus asked him if he'd been to Kabul, Iraq or Islamabad, Iraq, and he said he'd been to both. I think his stories about ranching might've been at least partly true though. Probably headed to Joshua Tree next.

Apparently Marcus believes in flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants to the point of not reading car rental contracts before signing them, so we weren't allowed to take the car back to New Mexico. That meant no pie in Pie Town and no visiting the VLA (the Very Large Array, those big radio-telescopes) but no big deal, we just stayed in Arizona and did part of a canyon hike I heard of through Andrew Skurka--the Safford-Morenci trail. It's part of the Grand Enchantment Trail ( http://www.simblissity.net/grand_enchantment.shtml ) that connects Phoenix and Albuquerque. We may or may not have actually found the right trail, but whatever canyon we walked up was cool enough, so we kept going. Then we tried to camp at Saguaro National Park in order to check it out tomorrow, but they lock the gate at sundown, so we just kept on going north to Phoenix/Mesa, and are crashing at a friend's house. I'm enjoying returning to semi-normalcy in that I just watched "Stranger Than Fiction...

After spending a night in Silver City at The Drifter motel (how aptly-named is that?)watching ESPN tell me ad nauseam that the Skins got destroyed 52-7 by the Pats, I hitched west to Glenwood, NM and hiked the Catwalk National Recreation Trail. It's only a mile or so long, but it's a pretty cool slot canyon with a metal walkway built to the wall in the narrower parts. Hitched to Springerville this morning, Marcus is on his way over from Phoenix, and we'll head to Pie Town. I really enjoy hitch-hiking. It's fun to try and hold your tongue when people tell you that global warming is a scam to create a world government.

The journey is complete. According to timeanddate.com, it took 178 days, 13 hours, and 30 minutes . Here's how it ended. 10 minutes after I left the Internet cafe in Silver City on the 23rd, the power went out all over town. I couldn't buy my groceries or even use some of the pay-phones around town. Mysteriously, Dairy Queen still had power, so I hung out there until the power came back on, bought my groceries, and walked out of town on highway 90. The next day I walked highway and dirt county roads to near Separ, NM. I saw my second rattler (a Green Mojave?) of the trip. On the 25th I passed through Separ, which is actually just Bowlin's Continental Divide Trading Post . Gross. I walked more roads with a little cross-country cacti bushwhacking to near Hachita. I did see some wild horses, but I also got swooped by an enormous bat, and swarmed by 5 Border Patrol trucks. Three drove past me in formation, one pulled a U-turn and focused his lights on me, and the two f...

Aaron: The new Radiohead album the day it came out? You, my friend, are awesome. Thomas, Jody, Wendell, and Sarah: I wish I knew the Cookie Monster song, because if I did, I'd sing it in your honor right now. Thanks! Did 38 on Sunday so I could get to the Grants PO by Monday closing--I surely wouldn't want to be forced to pay $25 for a hotel room and watch movies and Monday Night Football and drink a gallon of chocolate milk--that would have stunk. So I climbed Mt. Taylor (11,301") then walked by a landfill and a prison literally 10 yards from the road while inmates followed me in the yard and stared. Went to the PO and grocery store, then left town. After a bunch of annoying lava and road walking I'm in Pie Town now on the 18th. I've got maps for the rest of the trip. There are a lot of options south of here. I'm not excited about fording the Gila again, but I probably will end up there anyway. Hopefully, I'll be in Silver City in 5 days, then visit the ...

I listened to All Things Considered as I walked into town today, so all is well with the world. Except for my parents' house being in danger of burning down, along with the rest of SoCal, it seems. After a quick stop in Pie Town, I hiked over John Kerr peak and imagined it was really John Kerry peak and busied myself making puns--I didn't climb John Kerry peak because of its French-looking North Face, but I wish we'd gone over John Kerry peak because anything would've been better than the 4 miles of bush whacking before and after. Lame, I know. Then I got to Snow Lake and walked the Middle Fork of the Gila River from end to end. My love/hate relationship with the canyon continues. In the afternoon I was thinking "if we ever run out of petroleum and Tina Turner runs the world with a disguised midget named Master-Blaster as enforcer and good people have to hide in surprisingly well-watered canyons in the desert, I got dibs on the Gila." Then in the morning ...

Well, I've exceeded my allotted number of offers of free showers/rides from skeezy guys while in town in the past two hours (I usually prefer to get these offers once every NEVER!) so I'm ready to get out of town, but the library was on the way, so here I am. I did the San Pedro Parks Wilderness yesterday and this morning, and now we've only got one high place left--Mt. Taylor, which is in the next few days between here and Grants. It hit 82 degrees yesterday. Life is good. I camped with Jug and Nitro the night before last and realized that was only the 3rd night out of 162 nights (including day one when I started at 8 PM and camped at the state park three miles from the border) that I've camped with other CDT hikers. Obviously there've been a few nights with other random people in the national parks or Forest Service campgrounds or at a couple friends' places, but not a lot. It was also cool that Nitro knows more about the NFL than any other human being I'v...

Other things I need to mention: Milena, you rock. You totally rock. Lindt truffles? F--- Yeh! Cal Football is #2 in the nation. F--- Yeh! I'm not sure of exactly the mileage or what route I'll take south of Pie Town, but if it's ~300 from Pie Town to Antelope Wells like I think it is, I'm guessing I'll be finishing on the 29th or 30th, assuming decent weather. Marcus might fly down and pick me up, we might try and see Andy Skurka finish his hike at the Grand Canyon on the 3rd, then head to SD and pick up some stuff so I can have more than one set of clothing in Berkeley. My sister has a layover from Indonesia in LAX on the 7th, so that's all got to work in there somehow. It's too much to think about--I've got to get hiking. I'm gunning for El Bruno's (the best Mexican food ever) in Cuba the day after tomorrow, and maybe the Grants PO before closing on the 15th. Also, if you were wondering, I weight 128 pounds. I hit an all-time high of 14...

I ended up staying a night in Pagosa Springs, because it started dumping when Namie was driving me around to do my errands, so it made more sense to stay in a warm dry house than to hike for half an hour before dark and get soaked. Unfortunately, it was still raining (hard!) the next morning, so I ditched into a ski-area tool shed on the Divide and hid there from the lightning for a few hours. I only made 16 that day, and 22-25 the next two days, but on the 7th, I went over 12,000 feet for the last time, left the South San Juan Wilderness, and camped on the state line. On the 8th, I woke up, told CO to kiss my ass (I've got pictures,) and hiked on, and it's been glorious New Mexico jeep roads 'n bushwackin' ever since, with 32+ miles each of the last two days. Right now, I'm in the computer lab at Ghost Ranch--I hiked 18 already before noon to make it before lunch, and it's 74 degrees outside! 74 degrees! The last day I spent in CO it was 18 when I woke up,...

Just rolled into Pagosa Springs. The weather today isn't great, but it's not horrible. I left Lake City on Sunday and had great weather, but Monday it snowed on me again. Tues. and Wed. were great. Namie, the local trail angel is coming into town and going to help me run my errands and then I'm headed right back to the trail--65 miles left of Colorado, and I can't wait for some of New Mexico's boring-ass low-altitude jeep roads. The San Juans were a completely different experience this time around. I didn't recognize much of anything without 8 feet of snow except for obvious things like The Window and the Rio Grande Pyramid. I did do the entire official route though, or rather, what was the official route in June, as they're partially done with a higher re-route that I didn't take because I wanted to see where I'd nearly drowned (Pole Creek). Of course it was piddly this time of year. I guess I'm now 2 days behind schedule, but things are ...

Oh my word, I am tired. Like my mom wrote below, I'm taking a day off in Lake City, CO. I'd hoped to go straight from Monarch Pass (which I hit on schedule on the 25th) but I got hammered yesterday going over 14,014 San Luis Peak. Bagging the peak is actually three-tenths of a mile shorter than the official trail that just goes over a shoulder, but when I got to 13,000 the winds were gusting to maybe 70mph and it felt like Nolan Ryan was chucking gravelly snow at me, so I bailed to the regular route. I met two nice dayhikers Dave and Greg that were good company during crappy weather. I still made 28 miles, but I camped right by the road to town and when the weather was still crap this morning I decided I needed more food/warmer socks to be able to make it through the San Juans. I got a pair of neoprene wading socks (the first time I've ever been glad an outfitter is fishing oriented!) and some more food and I should be good to go tomorrow, assuming I can get some slee...

From a postcard: 23rd, Twin Lakes - I'm a little bit loco. Climbed 14,433 ft Mt. Elbert (CO's highest) last night as a snow storm was coming in. To make it better, I did a traverse. Bummed I didn't do Mt. Massive (CO's 2nd highest) as well. Good thing - with PO hours, it really didn't set me back at all. Peace, G From a phone call: 29th, Lake City - He tried to climb another 14er but the weather turned bad and he is forced to take a break in town.

September 14 - left Steamboat at 7pm, did 12 miles of highway walking at night to get my miles in after 7 hours in town. September 15 - My 28th birthday. Did around 30 miles. Passed Wildcat, so I'm not the last southbounder anymore. September 16 - Woke early because of lightning. It was on and off all day. I remembered something - the weather in Colorado is horrible. And there's no shame in low routes when the weather calls for it - lightning will kill you. That's the one piece of advice Scott Williamson could give me about this hike - let weather determine your hike. It kinda sucks, but unless you have the time to wait out every storm (every day), which I don't, it's what you have to do. THEN IT SNOWED ON ME.

First, to mail me something at a post office, you can send it to: Garret Christensen c/o General Delivery Town, State ZIP But I won't be using that many PO's any more, just Twin Lakes, CO (81251) on 9/22, Grants, NM (87020) on 10/13, Pie Town, NM (87827) on 10/16. You could also use USPS to Ghost Ranch (on 10/7): Garret Christensen c/o Ghost Ranch Conference Center HC77, Box 11 Abiquiu, NM 87510 and write "Please hold for hiker, ETA ---" on the package. (The postal address in my last post for the Monarch Crest store is apparently no good, you have to use UPS, so don't worry about that.) THANKS! Everything is going well. It's raining like CRAZY outside, so it's good that I'm sitting in the library. I've got my next bunch of maps, now I've just got to go buy a bunch of food and mail it ahead to avoid some long hitches. There's a long highway walk south of town, so hopefully I can get started on that before it's too dark--camping b...

Hi all. Poor planning (I shouldn't have stayed in Lander) means I have to wait here for the PO to open tomorrow morning. Oh well. On my way into town a disabled vet gave me $1 and then said I could stay at his place, so it's all good. I did blow a day, but let's hope it doesn't matter. The desert was quick and easy. Lots of antelope and wild horses, and no 105 degree heat. For those of you wondering how much planning it takes to do a high-speed long-distance hike like this (or for those cool people out there that would like to send me cookies or details of the college football season), here's the e-mail I just sent my folks about resupplies for the rest of my hike. Hi. Here's my plan. The town name, the date I'll be there, and the miles from previous town, plus what I'd like to happen. An asterisk indicates I need you to send stuff. *Rawlins 9/9 *Steamboat Springs, CO Fri 9/14 (140) I just need the maps. I'll mail food from here to Monarch and maybe ...

First, happy belated birthday Mom. There were no phones at 13,000 feet when I was boulder-hopping across glacial moraines on the Divide in the northern half of the Winds, so I didn't call. Please accept my apologies. Anyway, I'm in Lander now. Here's the skinny: after 5 nights in Yellowstone on a made-up route that had some very cool parts (ridges, canyons, bison) I reconnected with the official CDT at Two Ocean Pass. The next day I got to Dubois , WY. Hitching took forever , but I finally got a ride from Matt Carpenter, a guy that horse-packed the entire trail a couple years ago starting at Canada in April and raised something like $8 million for the Make a Wish Foundation. (Google him, or try something like diamondc.wyoming.com?). Yes, starting southbound in April is nuts, and yes, taking 16 horses over some of these high passes is nuts, but this guy puts Jeremiah Johnson to shame. I entered the Winds and did two absolutely amazing high-route alternates--walking the...

Postcard: I'm in Mammoth waiting for the backcountry office to open. That means I'm in Wyoming, right? Sweet! I'll be headed east from here then south down the Lamar. The first day and a half in the park were very tough--hopefully the river trails I have in mind will be cruisier like the Flatheads. In general Montana was totally amazing. Just a tip for visitors--if you want to be liked say, "my dad went to high school in Browning" not "I'd like to see less cattle-grazing on public land." Phone: Garret was in Dubois today. He says the route he took made him miss most of the northbounders, but thinks he may be ahead of his friend Andy Skurka (headed south) which would be good company if Andy catches up. Note to parents: Greetings from Tower Fall Campground. I'm supposed to be at a backcountry site 6 or 7 miles back, but I couldn't bring myself to stop hiking at 5:00, so here I am. Today I saw The Black Canyon of the Yellowstone. Man, it was HOT...

From a postcard: I'm sittng at the ranger station in Ennis trying to figure out the best way from here to Yellowstone. My preferred route crosses private property so I'll make a little change. Also looks like I won't be able to make it to Mammoth Hot Springs before my first night in Yellowstone, so I'll have call and get my permit from here. Aside from these minor annoyances and seeing way too many cattle pooping in my water, all is well. The Tobacco Roots definitely had cool parts. On to the Madison Range.

Me, pointing to where I was at the time. The red blob is a big fire that went from 19,000 acres to 32,000 acres the day the photo was taken. Yep, that's all smoke in the air as I passed the Fool's Creek fire. Crap, did I take this? Sure looks pretty. Wish I had some idea where it was. I want to say it was on the border of the Lewis and Clark NF and the Blackfoot reservation near the Swift Dam, but I could be wrong. Yep, I'm wrong, it's in Glacier. It's St. Mary's Falls, or Virginia Falls, one of the two. The Ahern Drift on the Highline Trail in Glacier. Usually this is a totally treacherous spot because the trail is crazy narrow and the cliff is steep and covered in snow, but there was nothing to worry about when I got there. Me at the border on August 6 at around 10 AM. From a postcard: "Please blog this. Aaron Rutman, it has been an honor to call you "one of my four friends" for the last 3 years. It's a shame I've only live...

From a phone call: No cute girls around. In fact, they're Butte ugly. Yesterday was a BAD day--feet were bleeding. Not sure if it's the cheap socks or the shoes that last 8 days. Possibly flesh eating bacteria eating the fleshy bottoms of feet. Despite it all, Garret sounded great and was in high spirits. He just got a new playlist for his MP3 player, so look out for a bearded Onion singing Neil Diamond in your neighborhood.

From a postcard: Arrived at Lincoln safely. Thanks to all the rangers and firefighters trying to keep us and our forests safe. Even more thanks to those with some compassion and a sense of adventure as well. I was totally safe, but just barely got through; hikers behind me are totally screwed. On to Butte.

On Aug. 6 Garret started a letter. On Aug. 9th he finished it. We got it this week. Here's the deal: He reached the Canadian border at 10:25 AM on the 6th. He kinda wanted to continue on Canada's Great Divide Trail, or take a left and hike along the border, but mostly he "just wanted to turn around and get to Colorado ASAP to see what the the San Juans look like when they aren't filled to the brim with snow." So he started a westerly route south through Glacier, trying to stay west of the Bob, but fires drove him east. He plans to reach the Mexican border by Nov. 2, making it 95.5 days northbound and 88 days southbound. Which he thinks is doable, but he's going to take a major alternate/detour through Yellowstone (don't send stuff to him between Butte and Dubois). A ranger he met kept muttering about him being "insane" just like on the PCT when the tough old dudes said, "Have you always had calves that big or you just do a lot of hiking?...

Garret called me at 5:45 Saturday morning, which would be 6:45 his time. He began with one sentence: "It's cold!" Even though he's at lower altitudes now than he has been at his entire trek, he was really feeling the chill. He told me that he's on the east side of the Divide (at least that's what I understood) just avoiding wildfires. It's weird to him that he's only going to hike about 5% of Montana on the actual trail, but he's glad to be southbound. He's also hiking closer to towns (thus the ability to call) which is somewhat disappointing. But on the up-side, he's glad he's not risking his life hiking through a forest fire. Also he's seen several bears. He should hit Lincoln today or so.

Woohoo! I'm alive! I just walked ~180 miles from Lincoln, almost entirely off the official CDT to detour around 3 huge fires. (Ahorn, Fool's Creek, and Skyland, the last was for a while the top priority fire in America. Check out www.inciweb.org for really up to date info.) I didn't even know that Skyland existed when I left Lincoln, so I was making up a route on the fly, asking crew I met to radio ahead and see if trails were open. Last night I slept a hundred yards from a dirt road that itself is the firebreak at the east end of the Skyland fire and watched the fires on the hills above me all night. At least they didn't keep me up all night like the wolves a couple nights previous. I also saw a griz yesterday. So it's been pretty rough/amazing the last little while. I'm excited about heading into Glacier tomorrow. I need to tell this story: I left Lincoln and was walking on NF roads to get back on the real trail. From Lincoln, I'd ordered a pack ...

Dammit Al Gore, we believe you already! Now turn off your infernal global warming machine! I'll never drive a car again, just let me hike the Bob! If you'd asked me before this trip what parts I was looking forward to, I'd've said "Glacier, the San Juans, the Winds, and the Bob." And now the entire Lewis and Clark NF sections of the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Scapegoat Wilderness are closed thanks to fires, so I won't get to see the Chinese Wall, a 1000-ft shere cliff on the Divide that goes for miles and miles. Thanks a lot global warming-warmer winters-pine beetles-wildfires vicious circle. I talked to rangers at the office in town for hours this morning, but they're still working on putting together an alternate route. I met a sobo hiker yesterday, and his route hit the road way west of Lincoln (Lincoln is already ~30 miles west of the Divide) so I dropped from an earlier pass and walked directly into town in case I'd have to take that rou...

On schedule! I did 122 miles in about 73 hours because the Darby post office isn't open on Saturdays, so all the sudden I'm on schedule, assuming I can get a ride out of town this afternoon. I got a new pair of shoes (I'd had the previous since Steamboat Springs, so they were hating it.) I got a haircut (sorry, no unabomber beard--it's freaking hot out here, and it's kinda nasty to have dead mosquitoes and flies all up in your face). Speaking of flies, I killed either 82 or 84 in a two hour period the day I left Lima, MT (it's on I-15 if you're looking at a map). Usually I'd go at that pace from around 9:30 AM to 7:30 PM, but that day it rained so they went away. They've kind of gotten less bad of late--the trail's new challenge is that it's super PUDy. It doggedly follows the Divide and is full of Pointless Ups and Downs rather than PCT-style contouring from saddle to saddle. I'm starting to run into southbounders, so that makes th...

If anyone intimately familiar with the CDT happens to read my blog, do you know the details of a route from Delmoe Junction near Butte, MT to Lewis Junction on the Dogshead trail near Lewis Lake in Yellowstone NP? It's mentioned at the southern end in the CDTS guidebooks, but I don't know if it's described in detail anywhere. Does anyone do this route? It says it's much shorter, and it seems like it would facilitate hiking north-south across all of Yellowstone, so that would be cool, and if it was much shorter and didn't skip something cool in southern Montana, then if I do it soutbound it might give me time to hike the San Juans again rather than taking the Creede cutoff. Thanks for any info.

Hello all. I'm at Sun and Steph's cabin on the Madison river in MT near West Yellowstone for the afternoon. They picked me up from the road/trail near Macks Inn, ID. I tried to convince them that we needed to spend the day watching Transformers and whatever the IMAX theatre happens to be showing, but they weren't up for it. Apparently they come up here to do outdoorsy stuff. Whatever, lame-o's :) Anywho, I finished Wyoming! I hiked through the Red Desert, then the Bridger Wilderness in the Wind River range, then Yellowstone NP. The Winds were amazing. They're too high and glaciated to stay on the crest most of the way, so the route stays pretty low and goes around a bunch of pretty ponds/lakes, but there are three alternates that hit some pretty awesome heights. I did one of the three, over Jackass and Texas passes through the Cirque of the Towers. (a la Robert Frost: Oh, I left the first for another day!) Google cirque of the towers, I'm sure the pictu...

Just crossed most of the Red Desert. Heat up to 105 and no shade w/nothing but sagebrush for miles and miles and miles. Saw one group of wild horses and a million antelope. Also found a tick on me basically every time I looked. Took slightly longer alternate along Sweetwater River. Beautiful oasis, but too bad there were a million horse flies. Looking forward to getting off jeep roads and back on real trail in the Wind rivers. Still the greatest adventure of my life thus far. :)

Goodbye, CO! Hello, WY! The Mt. Zirkel Wilderness was awesome, I crossed the border, the Huston Park Wilderness was pretty lame, but then I saw a herd of ~300 elk, making it pretty dang cool. I started the big desert stretch and did a huge roadwalk. The road was part of the course in the Great Divide bike race , so I saw 7 of them go by, plus some very friendly motorists stopped to see what the heck I was doing (this road is really long and really empty through really empty terrain). I'm feeling good. I got blisters on each pinky toe, so that kinda stinks, but I guess I feel OK. The terrain in CO was so rough I could rarely do more than 2 mph, but I was doing 4 on the road this morning into town, so it feels good to know that I still have it in me if the terrain isn't ridiculous. My pack feels a little too heavy, especially now that I have to haul lots of water again. Sometimes by 9:30 PM when I quit I'm stumbling around like a drunk and banging my feet on every roc...

Sweet. I'm only one day behind schedule, and the mountains had to take a little break while I went from some range east of here over by Rocky Mountain National Park to the Rabbit Ears range over here, plus this is my last resupply in Colorado. 1256 miles done. I ran the last hour into Grand Lake a couple days ago in order to get to the PO before it closed to mail my ice axe home. Too bad everything else closed at 5 too, so the only socks I could find in town are cute little ones with moose on them. Speaking of moose, I saw my first two of the trail in the past few days. I saw three beavers on the bike trail to Frisco, as well as a guy fly fishing from the shoulder of I-70. Not a trailhead, not a pullout, not even a wide shoulder, there was just a dude fishing from I-70. I thought it was pretty awesome that he could've gone trolling if he got in his car and drove along in first gear. I continue to see lots of elk, but also saw a couple newborn dear that were still mottled ...

I have tried to put these photos into roughly reverse chronological order but they lack captions because I don't have any details at hand. Not anymore, says Garret. Hopefully once I get home and look at all of them in exact order I'll remember names and everything. That's always seemed to work out before. Yep, it was pretty much like this for 250+ solid miles. Me, on the crest somewhere in the SJ's. Gunsight Pass in the SJ's. Woo! Made it to Colorado. The Toaster House in Pie Town. Formerly a hostel, now a porch to hang out on. The road turns to gumbo and attaches to your shoes in 5 pound clumps. Aspens, not birches Aaron :) I believe along the Black Range Crest Trail Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument Lone rattler of the trip (so far). West Fork, Gila River Gila River The Gila River, forded 150~ times This should be obvious. The border. 8:00~ PM May 2.