Winter is Coming

Southern Colorado is probably the main key to a successful southbound CDT hike. The mountains are high, the trail goes through exposed terrain and hikers are forced to be in the area late in the season. Indeed, as the saying goes, Winter Is Coming and it comes early when you are consistently between 11 and 13 K feet high.

Light, dark and alpine profiles in the San Juan Range

It may be wonderful: no heat, no bugs, no thunderstorm hell that plagues these ranges in the summer season. Some would argue September is actually the best time of the year to be around, yet this is no day hike where you can choose a good weather window. When thru-hiking, you don’t have much choice as to where and when, you just hike through to the best of your strength, dawn to dusk, then make camp. If a snow storm moves through, you swallow it. If day’s end puts you in high ground, you make camp there.

The San Juan Range of Southern Colorado is scenic but on top of anything else it is wild. As a European, this is one of the main reasons why I came over to hike the CDT in the first place so the San Juans were a particularly enticing highlight of this trip. Together with the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Northern Montana, these mountains are the most remote section of trail on the Continental Divide. I was really looking forward to hike them.

Wilderness is the word

At the same time, I was very concerned about impending winter. You hike like mad for 3 months straight just to be in the San Juans while it’s not yet too late. You don’t think of it every day but the thought has been there since June. Barely 200 miles that I really wouldn’t like to short-cut or bail out from.

Just on day 2 into the San Juan Range, a freak snow storm reminded me how big the mountains are and how small I am. The weather had been freaking cold for a while already and it was not gonna get any milder. Actually the worst of it all has been the fierce wind, a constant presence, no matter what the rest of the weather was doing.

New snow in the San Juan Mountains

Traversing these valleys, cols and ridges was tough and beautiful, not objectively difficult neither dangerous but, to me, incredibly hard work.

I am now resting in a little New Mexico town and the rest of the CDT is all downhill.