Hiking Colorado's Continental Divide--a gallery of photos

10_02_2017_CDT PRIME20170609013

Here’s a gathering of photos from hiking the Continental Divide Trail through Colorado. The images that are special to me. The big idea was to walk from Cumbres Pass, New Mexico to the Wyoming border--750 wild, high, lonesome miles on the continents spine.

For various reasons—lightening among them--the real journey wasn’t linear at all. For want of a better description, I ended up chunk hiking the Divide. And instead of hiking it mostly solo as planned I ended up mostly hiking with friends I made along the way and friends who came out to partake of the fun. I had plenty of alone time as well.

People ask me how many miles I did in the two months I’d allotted for the hike. I didn’t keep track. Maybe I walked half the divide. Maybe less. Maybe more. I covered all but a few small pieces of the CDT in the San Juan’s and up north I got close to Wyoming. I walked a lot of miles getting to and from the Divide. I drove over three thousand car shuttle miles and did a sturdy amount of hitch hiking. You can’t really measure the worth of journey in miles.

There was also the work thing. I had to be back for work at my part time photo-editing job at the Denver Post by September 4th. I knew I wouldn’t get all of the Divide walked in 7-9 weeks so the Part B of my big plan was to spend the rest of the fall picking off the chunks closest to Denver.

That still may be the plan but for the past few weeks I’ve been sidelined from hiking by first a kink in the back issue and then a crippling IT band issue. Now snow has come to the Divide as well. But the tale is not entirely spun out. Not yet.