A Colorado Trail Thru Hike 2023: The Beginning

Mentally I starting to compare my JMT journey to my current Colorado Trail thru hike. It’s Day 2 and there’s not much to compare- the concept, the idea- surviving and thriving, one foot in front of the other until you make it to camp for the night, and then you do it all over again the next day, it’s pretty much the same. This would go on for a total of 38 days, but we’re not that far ahead of this journey yet. It was nice camping by the river for the first night, and well worth the 16.8 miles to get there. My longest mileage to date before the Colorado Trail was one long 17 mile day on the JMT; so it felt pretty damn good to almost bypass that on my first day…

Let’s backtrack a little, shall we? It’s Day 1 on the Colorado Trail and after completely bawling my eyes out for the first mile, I ran into Jay. We ended up hiking together for the first day, and I probably wouldn’t have been motivated enough to hike 16.8 miles that day, so for his company, I was grateful. The next few days, I’d average double digits until afternoon rain stopped me a bit early.

“The trail is tough, but I am tougher” I texted my family from camp on Day 4. This trail is kicking my butt, but I am enjoying the challenge. There’s a lot of service on trail, more than I’d honestly like to have but it is nice to check in once in a while. I’d meet Drew on Day 5 and we’d hitch into Jefferson together. I didn’t need to go, I had more than enough food but a burger sounded like just what I needed after an early afternoon thunderstorm stopped me pretty early the day before. It was a quick stop in Jefferson and right back to Kenosha Pass where we each paid $24/night to camp at the campground.

The climb up Georgia Pass was tough. I wasn’t aware of what I was getting into until I was already halfway through my climb. Raching dark clouds and being the only SOBO hiker on the pass, I felt uncomfortable and wanted to quickly, but safely make my way down. It was here where the CDT meets with the CT and we’d share the trail with CDT hikers on their way to Mexico! The next day, I’d learn about the Breck Epic bike race where 500 bikers were racing part of the CT that day. That was quite the experience, but grateful it only crossed our path that entire day.

We’re headed for Breckenridge for a zero and resupply. I’m staying in Dillon to head to REI for rain gear. I only planned on staying one day in town, but after hopping on the wrong shuttle after our 15 mile hike that afternoon, I didn’t get to the hotel until 6 PM. After a full zero day, and getting back on trail a little later that next morning, I found myself yet again racing dark clouds as I made my way up to Copper Pass. I wasn’t planning on going as far as I did that day, but I was able to catch up to Drew who also got back on trail that morning. We set up camp in silence, for the day totally kicked our butts. Just as camp was all set, it started to hail. And we both knew we earned a pizza and beer in town the next day.

Copper Mountain Resort was awesome and so were the few slices of pizza I had leftover that I brought to camp. We’d climb Kokomo Pass the next morning and make hotel reservations for one of the last rooms in Leadville that weekend due to the Leadville 100. It felt great knowing we were now hiking to a hotel. Lol. I guess you just had to be there to fully understand.

The hike to Kokomo Pass was beautiful, cloudy, and quite windy. It seems the rain followed us a bit that afternoon but it wasn’t ever anything too crazy. Enjoyed a nice 4-mile walk to the Tennessee Pass trailhead where it took us less than 10 minuets to get a hitch into Leadville.

Leadville was beautiful and just the town I’d imagined it to be. We walked around the town with our packs since it was too early to check in to our hotel. Our hitch dropped us off at City on a Hill Coffee shop and I had the most delicious chocolate chip blueberry scone I’d ever try!