The phone rang mid-morning a couple days ago. It was Sean Staplin.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself. Where are you?”
“Just about to start up Mt Elbert. Spent the night in Twin Lakes.”
We talk a little more and I feel a pang of jealousy.
My old stomping grounds. For most of 20 years, I scrambled around the mountains within sight of Mt Elbert. In four days on the trail, he’ll be back in my old home, Breckenridge. He’ll actually pass within a couple hundred yards of the ranch I lived on for my first two years in the county. A ranch originally homesteaded at the turn of the century and worked by mule and horse until the late 60’s. When I moved onto the ranch, the old horse-drawn hay mower, and bailer sat in the swale between the hay barn and the winter cow barn, both barns built in 1911 after the first winter homesteading. In the spring, we would ride the ditch five miles up to the head gate in the wilderness area to clear it of winter debris. Often it would take a couple trips to clear it and get the water running free. We’d break out the new beaver dams discouraging them from populating our irrigation ditch instead of the source of our water, South Willow Creek.
It’s wonderful country. Hard up against the mountains on a high river bench. Sun all day. Cold at night. Good views. Two full hay cuttings every summer. And few people.
And Sean’s’ hiking through as I write this. Now that I think of it, it’s not a pang. I am massively jealous. Massively.
It was only the second time in over two months I’d talked to Sean. Instead of the usual coffee in the morning at Freshies, he flew off and is walking home. Walking home from Mexico. On April 29, he gingerly stepped across the US / Mexican border at the Continental Divide/Crazy Cook boundary marker at the bottom of the New Mexico boot heel, stepped right back, and started walking north.
Walking home.
A half hour later, a Border Patrol SUV crested a knoll, stopped and glassed him. Recognizing Sean as a through hiker, they didn’t bother checking him out any more and drove on.
A through hiker?
Yep. He’s hiking through. All the way from Mexico back home–to Fernie–along the Continental Divide. The trail, such as it is, follows the Divide–the ridges, the valleys, the passes and the crests for 5,000 plus kilometers.
Most of us have a list of wishes—now called a bucket list after the Hollywood movie. It’s a list of things to accomplish before we kick the bucket. Most of us keep it in the back of the sock drawer, securely hidden. We surreptitiously take it out when we can sit alone, no one is watching and we ponder adding one item or taking an item off. Every once in a while, we actually tick one off and go on quietly with our lives. We don’t talk about the rest of the list. It just sits with the socks.
When Sean was 12 or so, he read a National Geographic article on the proposed Continental Divide Trail. The idea of hiking it in one summer percolated since that time, sitting in the back of the sock drawer on it’s own piece of paper.
A couple of years ago, he started quietly working on the equipment. The right pack. The right cook set. All super light. All bullet proof.
From years of climbing, Sean understood the value in moving fast and light. One. You get there quicker so you carry less. Two. You get there easier. Going 16 km with 20 pounds on your back is easier than going the same distance with 50 pounds on your back. And every pound on your foot is like five on your back. Go light. Very light. Go fast. Very fast.
He started with his feet (more on that in a minute) and created a stash of his favorite trail runners. They fit. They provided the support he wanted. And there would be no issues. He knew them. He figured seven pairs would see him through the trip.
Then he set to work on a pack, tent, sleeping bag, stove and cook set, extra clothes and how light could he make his toothbrush (I am not kidding). When he was done, when he stepped across the border to start walking home, he whittled the basics down to eight and a half pounds. That’s about what we put in a basket shopping at Overweightea. And then he added water and food. But basics—eight and a half pounds.
As he refined his gear, he gathered maps—GPS and paper. He worked out meals. He combined the maps with meals, working out when he would pop out of the woods and be able to re-supply. He packed boxes to be shipped when he reached key points.
The trip became a campaign. A very quiet obsession. The pool table in the basement became the operational headquarters.
I remember one early morning this winter swinging into his driveway and having to squeeze around a tent set up in the plowed area.
“It was only 10 below last night so I thought I’d see if it all worked.”
“And?”
“Perfect.”
If you look at a map of the US, you’ll see Denver is a little less than half way from the boot heel in New Mexico. That’s where Sean is. About a hundred miles west of Denver on the Divide.
The only real problem so far is his runners. They last about half as long as he thought they would. And his feet grew a half size. Apparently this is common. The walking causes your feet to grow a bit in the first 1000 miles. (I love that “the first 1000 miles”. The implication is huge, almost unspoken. And in the upcoming how many thousands of miles?) Sean’s call was to hook up with a good shop for shoes for the last half of the trip.
No biggie. I made a couple calls. Passed on his blog for background and folks will be ready to pick him up when he walks past my old ranch and exits the woods.
In a day or two he’ll be back on the trail, newly shod, and walking home. Step by step. Day by day. Pass by pass.
In September sometime, he’ll walk through Glacier National Park cross the Canadian border into Waterton Park. He’ll make a left turn toward Fernie and four days after that he’ll be home.
One tic off the list.
I wonder what else is lying in the back of his sock drawer?
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To follow Sean on his walk home, check out his blog
In the box on the left is a drop down on his gear.
To see the route of the Continental Divide Trail
Use the drop-down menu at the upper left to change the map from the Pacific Crest Trail to the Continental Divide Trail.
All photos from Sean’s blog.
