0.5 miles
Mt Princeton Hot
Springs
I'm awake before 6 AM,
hotel room gloomy.
"What if we go
back up to Cottonwood Pass and keep going, just skip our reservation
at Monarch? We'll show up Monday instead of Saturday," I say. I
pause. "Are you awake?"
"Yeah,"
Granite says. He's mulling it over. The diner nearby opens at 6:30 so
we lie in bed and wait a bit. Then we walk the two blocks through
Buena Vista. We cut through a park that is being watered by
sprinklers even though everything is still drenched from yesterday. A
few dog owners are out in the early morning.
The Evergreen Cafe
is the perfect diner, offering all manner of pancakes and omelets,
hashbrowns and fresh baked muffins. I order a stack of pancakes and
almost eat the whole thing. I would come here again. And maybe we
will, since we're trying to end our trip near this town in a week. I
order a blueberry muffin for the trail.
I stop by the store
while Granite heads back to the hotel. My feet are so dry and
callused and chafed that they hurt when my heels scrape my calves. So
I'm picking up a small travel container of lotion.
People say that the
longer you backpack, the less you carry. But I've added all sorts of
small things in the past few weeks, and discarded little.
When I'm back at the
hotel, Granite has a new proposal. He thinks we can do the rest of
our planned itinerary, only backwards. We'd just need to hitch to our
next resupply from the East Collegiate, then follow the Eastern side
down and around and end back on the West Collegiate to complete the
sections we missed, then we'd end at Cottonwood Pass again and try to
hitch into town from there. We might miss our zero day in Monarch,
but that's fine: we have been bumming around the hotel for most of a
day and we're itching for the trail.
We pack up carefully
and Steve, the co-owner of the hotel who is also annoyed about the
music festival, drives us to Mt. Princeton.
Mt. Princeton is a
huge hot springs resort with a fancy bar and restaurant and juice
bar. We buy day passes and hang out in the adult-only area, and I sip
smoothies with rum and float in hot water on pool noodles.
The day is chilly
and rainy so we can't lounge in the chairs outside. Instead we find
ourselves curled up on leather sofas in the lobby of the spa,
fireplace dead, people milling around us. I listen to an audiobook
and nap; I keep falling asleep.
We shower and go to
the restaurant at 6 PM. The waitress is painfully solicitous, but I
barely touch my food. Granite eats his dinner, then most of mine. I
retreat to the women's room to organize my pack and change into
hiking clothes. While I'm there, women filter in and out, commenting
on my pack and asking me questions.
Finally I'm out and
we bid goodbye to two other thru hikers about to head out. Then we're
outside, walking, and it feels so good. My body has been dying for
this. Why did we lie around all day when we could have been outside,
stretching our legs, watching the world slowly move behind us?
This section of the
Colorado Trail is on a paved road with traffic, not the scenic trail
we've come to expect. We walk and thumb half-heartedly, in case a
passing car wants to transport us to our campsite in 2 miles. Most
don't, but it's fine. It's not raining and there are huge, calm deer
in the grass by the side of the road, and the clouds are playing
strip tease with the chalk cliffs of the mountain.
We walk only 15
minutes when a tiny car pulls over and a young, quiet couple from
Colorado picks us up. They drive us the rest of the 2 miles to our
campsite.
There isn't much
dispersed camping near here because of the hot springs and private
land, but there's a weird little campsite by Chalk Creek Trailhead.
It's around 8 PM, maybe later, when we find it. There are two other
camping groups—a thru hiker named Pika and two boys who I think are
locals. We say hello but don't dally; we want the tent up before
dark.
I'm exhausted. How
funny that lying around all day can make me so tired. We curl up and
read for a bit, and then the light is gone and I hand the Kindle to
Granite. He reads another chapter or two of John Muir and then we're
drifting off, stream sound surrounding us.
Comments
Post a Comment