CT: Day 24 Hailing and Bailing

July 22

Miles: 11
Trail mile: 391

Segment 23 Mile 5.5 to Stony Pass

I wake in the barest of light, again starting with hopes of making at least some of the many exposed miles today before the weather inevitably does its thing. The incredible beauty of the San Juans is amplified by unexpected blue skies. The trail undulates over greener than green hills between 12 and 13,000 feet.

I play connect-the-cairns across high tundra in full spring mode. Red flowers have been scarce at the higher elevations but here there are all abloom. Amidst these fairytale fields we drink unfiltered water from the Rio Grande freshly melted from its snow-patch source visible above.

We stop to take advantage of what might be the last of the sun, drying gear and snacking. Just as I am folding up my ground sheet, the first fat drops go splat. I don’t even believe it at first. And we all assume it will move on. Instead, it rains hard. And hails. And thunders. And rains ever harder.

I over optimistically decide it is clearer in the direction we are heading, so Steph and I walk up the trail, past where Arcade and Glimmer are settings up their tent to wait for the thunder to stop. And then the most intense fork of lightening I have ever seen up close strikes the ridge just ahead. A massive “you shall not pass” sign if ever there was one.

Message received, we retreat back down to huddle under the willows where Glimmer and Arcade invite us in for tea. Steph and I huddle under vestibule flaps, the entire tent inside and out comically soaked. Glimmer passes tea around and we take turns sipping from the still lit jetboil stove.

An hour later, the rain eases enough for us all to imagine packing up. But we are so cold and wet we decide to try for Silverton – a tough hitch as we are on the edge of a rough gravel road high up in what was only minutes ago a ranging storm.

Miraculously a pickup truck stops and when the driver asked where we want to go “inside!” Is the loud consensus. The four of us and our gear pile in the open bed, clinging white-knuckled as the truck descends the treacherously steep road. my effort to hold on is made rather more complicated by the fact that i am wearing a skirt. Without underwear.

In Silverton we dry out over pizza and beer as CDT pro- glimmer secures us a room in a town with no vacancies.