justincwatt
New member
In June I asked my 71-year-old father if he had been planning to hike the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) this year if not for the pandemic. I don't remember his answer, because my question was really a lead-in to my follow-up. Would he be interested in hiking it (or a section of it) with me? I had taken 2019 off as a sort of self-funded sabbatical, during which I'd hiked the Arizona Trail with my wife (among other things), and then the pandemic extended my sabbatical into 2020. I had completed several months of landscaping projects and was starting to think about going back to work when this conversation with my Dad came up. I figured work could wait a month or two. The idea excited him, but he felt that the risk of contracting the coronavirus was just too great for someone his age. (You might think a self-supported long distance thru-hike has "social distance" built-in, and for the most part it does, but logistically it involves a lot of close contact with people, hitching rides to and from the trail, staying in hotels and hostels, shopping for food, etc., not to mention the plane or bus rides necessary to get from home to the trail and vice versa.)
A day later I came back to him with an alternative: an overland expedition. I could resupply him at various points along the trail—that I could reach with my Jeep—keeping him insulated from civilization, and thus, we hoped, the virus. He liked that idea, decided on a thousand-mile section of the CDT he was interested in hiking, and came up with a plan of meetups every 30-45 miles along the trail that he'd be able to hike over 2-3 days at a pace of 15 miles-per-day. Meanwhile I had 3 weeks to kit out my Jeep with a rooftop tent, solar panel, cabinets, storage bins, and a fridge. If you're interested in all the gory details, check out my blog post, Why I’m sleeping on top of a Jeep in Wyoming.
On Sunday, July 5th, I left Fresno, CA on my way to pick up Dad in Austin, TX. Of course the radiator blew up en route, so I had to deal with that, but eventually I reached him, got the Jeep all loaded up with his stuff, and then we headed to Wyoming where he planned to start hiking southbound on July 13th. I'd driven nearly 3,000 miles just to get him to the starting line.
Over 69 days, while he was hiking a thousand miles along the CDT, I drove 4,300 miles meeting up with him 38 times at various points along the trail, many in Colorado that I could have only reached with a high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicle, in particular North Lake TH (in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness), Base Camp TH (near Rabbit Ears), Miner's Creek Rd (near Frisco), Carson Saddle, Stony Pass, and Elwood Pass among others!
Things got really exciting on day 58. He had hiked 13 miles south of Cumbres Pass, and I drove out to meet him, because we knew some bad weather was forecast that night (Sept 8th). The next morning we awoke to 12-15 inches of snow on the ground. The 8 miles of dirt road that I'd driven had been erased. We were stuck. We "bivouacked" in the Jeep for 2 days, and then had a pretty harrowing experience trying to make it out with a stranded hunter on the 3rd day. If you don't mind a long read, I did my best to capture the experience in Snowbound on the CDT.
After the snow, Dad decided to "flipflop" down to Cuba, NM (the finish line of his thousand-mile section), and complete the remaining 150 miles by hiking northbound, while the snow, he hoped, would melt. It was bone dry when he returned a week later. With the hike complete, I dropped him off in Austin and returned home to Fresno, putting another 2,400 miles on the odometer, for a door-to-door expedition total of 9,660 miles.
Got questions, comments? Have at it, either here or on my blog.
p.s. I'm selling the rooftop tent with the solar panel, in case you're interested, and live within 3 hours of Fresno.
A day later I came back to him with an alternative: an overland expedition. I could resupply him at various points along the trail—that I could reach with my Jeep—keeping him insulated from civilization, and thus, we hoped, the virus. He liked that idea, decided on a thousand-mile section of the CDT he was interested in hiking, and came up with a plan of meetups every 30-45 miles along the trail that he'd be able to hike over 2-3 days at a pace of 15 miles-per-day. Meanwhile I had 3 weeks to kit out my Jeep with a rooftop tent, solar panel, cabinets, storage bins, and a fridge. If you're interested in all the gory details, check out my blog post, Why I’m sleeping on top of a Jeep in Wyoming.
On Sunday, July 5th, I left Fresno, CA on my way to pick up Dad in Austin, TX. Of course the radiator blew up en route, so I had to deal with that, but eventually I reached him, got the Jeep all loaded up with his stuff, and then we headed to Wyoming where he planned to start hiking southbound on July 13th. I'd driven nearly 3,000 miles just to get him to the starting line.
Over 69 days, while he was hiking a thousand miles along the CDT, I drove 4,300 miles meeting up with him 38 times at various points along the trail, many in Colorado that I could have only reached with a high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicle, in particular North Lake TH (in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness), Base Camp TH (near Rabbit Ears), Miner's Creek Rd (near Frisco), Carson Saddle, Stony Pass, and Elwood Pass among others!
Things got really exciting on day 58. He had hiked 13 miles south of Cumbres Pass, and I drove out to meet him, because we knew some bad weather was forecast that night (Sept 8th). The next morning we awoke to 12-15 inches of snow on the ground. The 8 miles of dirt road that I'd driven had been erased. We were stuck. We "bivouacked" in the Jeep for 2 days, and then had a pretty harrowing experience trying to make it out with a stranded hunter on the 3rd day. If you don't mind a long read, I did my best to capture the experience in Snowbound on the CDT.
After the snow, Dad decided to "flipflop" down to Cuba, NM (the finish line of his thousand-mile section), and complete the remaining 150 miles by hiking northbound, while the snow, he hoped, would melt. It was bone dry when he returned a week later. With the hike complete, I dropped him off in Austin and returned home to Fresno, putting another 2,400 miles on the odometer, for a door-to-door expedition total of 9,660 miles.
Got questions, comments? Have at it, either here or on my blog.
p.s. I'm selling the rooftop tent with the solar panel, in case you're interested, and live within 3 hours of Fresno.
