The ADT Journey – Week 17

Posted on October 18, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

Two days out of Leadville found us hanging around the Copper Mountain resort area, where we took a break at the Daylight Donuts establishment, chowing down donuts and pastries, some free of charge.  In truth we were procrastinating, as the cold, overcast weather that afternoon boded ill tidings for our return to mountain ridges.  Our procrastination led to a serendipitous chain of events, which lasted until Illinois.

As we lingered around eating donuts and pastries several interested people talked to us, including a Nebraskan couple touring on motorcycles, who gave us twenty dollars.  The serendipity began when we met Andy Held. He informed us that a significant amount of snow was forecast for the higher elevations that evening and suggested the alternative of hiking on a bike path to Frisco, where he would put us up in a hotel for the night.  He also would take us out for breakfast the next morning for a longer chat.

Hmmmm.  We had a choice between taking the high route through mountain snowstorms, or the low route to a hotel, free breakfast and who knows what else.  We chose the low route, gladly adding six more miles to our day and not arriving in Frisco until dark.  The extra mileage aggravated my left foot, which otherwise had been feeling better since we left Utah, but this alternative promised to be worth the extra pain.

At breakfast the next morning Andy shared some of Frisco’s community oriented activities.  He also put in a good word to MountainSmith for us, for Cindy was in need of a new pack and they contracted with Andy as a web marketer.  In addition to our good fortune from meeting Andy, our presence in Frisco led to both a short and long term serendipitous chain.

We arranged to meet Ky at the Frisco Visitor Center to resupply for our next stretch up and over Argentine Pass, highest point on the American Discovery Trail and our final crossing to the east side of the Continental Divide.  The long term serendipitous chain began when we met three tourists from Kansas City at the visitor center while waiting for Ky.  They took a great interest in our journey and we took a great interest in possibly having a place to stay when the ADT brought us through Kansas City.

Before we parted, Ardie and Gretchen acquired our email address for later contact and gave to us another twenty dollar bill, for the third time in less than a week and the seventh time overall.  I want to make clear we never asked for donations during the journey; people just kept giving to us even when we tried to refuse.  In any case, twenty dollars pales in value to what Ardie and Gretchen would do for us later in the journey.

The Summit Daily newspaper in Frisco, which lies in the appropriately named Summit County, interviewed us while we were in town.  That began the short chain of serendipitous events over the next few days, as we hiked through the towns of the broad valley nestled between majestic peaks.  Our next town after Frisco was Dillon, which we did not reach until dark due to a series of delays and miscalculations.

We hoped to camp in the National Forest that evening, but the full campground forced us to move on.  After the National Forest came the Dillon Reservoir, with no camping allowed.  That explained our late arrival into a populated area with no obvious prospects for camping, given our limited financial means.

We approached a police officer parked at a municipal park and asked if we could stay in the park for the night, explaining that we were walking 5,000 miles across the country.  He said no, he would give us a ticket.  We then asked if we could spend the night in jail, a tactic used by some of my long distance hiker friends in the past.  He reiterated that he would give us a ticket if we continued to linger and added that the police in Dillon do not have a sense of humor.

We saw no other alternative but to bust the budget and rent a room in a Best Western that night.  The next morning we went to the lobby for the continental breakfast.  In the paper rack was the Summit Daily with a picture of us prominently featured.  The manager at the desk took note of the resemblance between the photo and us and comped us the room, resolving our budget dilemma.  I only hoped that the police officer we met saw us in that paper as well.

The next town after Dillon was Keystone.  As we hiked along the bike path from end to end through the town we encountered a few other people who noted the similarity between us and the Summit Daily photo.   A bridal party adopted us and treated us at a coffee shop near the route.  We took our time with the hope that the stormy weather that day would pass.  When we reached the far end of Keystone, huddling under a bus stop in a steady rain, we were rescued from going further that day by Deb Stein, another Summit Daily reader who paid for another hotel stay that night.

During a four day stretch of mostly bad weather in the mountains we spent three nights in three different hotels, all free of cost, all comped by different people, thanks to a chance encounter with Andy Held.  Fortunately, the last day of bad weather was more rain than snow in the mountains, mostly clearing the trails for our momentous ascent over Argentine Pass.  A sparkling clear day greeted us as we finally left our hospitable valley behind.

Cindy once again struggled above 12,000’, but this would be our last climb of that magnitude.  We took a break at the pass for a good while, parked against the lee side of some rocks to reduce the windy cold.  Our climb had been where the typical rain shadow on the western side of major mountains nurtures abundant vegetation.  The east side of Argentine Pass, all the more drier from the same rain shadow effect, appeared barren in contrast.

We watched another hiker ascend towards us, wearing a much lighter pack with plans to loop back down before the end of the day.  Well behind his schedule, he left the pass before we did in order to get down before dark.  He may not have succeeded.

By arriving at Argentine Pass on September 18 we accomplished our goal of getting over the Continental Divide before September 22.  Just a short distance north, on the same date, a blizzard snowed in our group at 11,000’ in the Arapaho Wilderness.  I originally hoped to cross the divide on September 19, for our 25th anniversary, but we arrived a day early to take advantage of the clear weather.

We officially celebrated our 25th in January with a vacation in Kauai, but spending this brief time together above 13,000’ seemed a more fitting way to toast our wonderful journey together.  Cindy again showed signs of cognitive improvement since her stressed out lows in Utah, but that hopeful sign did not overcome a feeling of nostalgia that this break may be the last one for us to feel on top of the world together.

We ended our break and turned to go down the barren east side of the Continental Divide, a couple of long distance hikers doing their thing together.

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The ADT Journey – Week 16

Posted on October 11, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

We left Crested Butte packed for a five day stretch that would bring us to Leadville, the highest town in the United States.  Already while hiking in Colorado we met more people than in the whole states of Nevada and Utah.  Though Barrett hiked with us for awhile in the same west-east direction, we encountered no long distance hikers coming the other way, on the ADT or any other trail.  Indeed, we met very few hikers going either way at any distance; most of our backcountry encounters were with ATV users.

That changed our second day out when we spotted a person heading westbound who appeared to be a long distance hiker, considering his gear, gait and conditioning.  I walked right up to him for a handshake and declared:  “You look like a long distance hiker, the first one we have seen coming from the opposite direction.  Let me shake your hand!”

Given the remote area where we met, we knew each other to be ADT hikers and sat down to chat for a spell.  I discovered I already knew about Mark’s former hiking partner while planning our journey.  His partner publicly declared himself to be hiking the ADT the year before us for a clean water cause.  Mark’s partner had dropped out and Mark took the winter off before resuming the hike in 2011.

Unlike with Barrett, our encounter would be a once only occurrence before resuming our hikes. We stretched out our chat as long as feasible, but cold weather and an approaching storm sent us moving on in our opposite directions.  Mark was not likely to encounter any other ADT distance hiker for the rest of his journey.  Only a handful of people thru-hike the ADT each year and most go in the same direction as Mark, the direction in which the ADT guide was written.  No one would be starting towards the end of summer from Point Reyes to go eastbound, regardless.

We were more likely than Mark to encounter another long distance hiker, but not for many months, as distance hikers usually avoid hiking throughout the winter.  We could not expect to bump into anyone else like us until the next calendar year, when we would hike through an Appalachian spring.  Speaking of winter, the weather had a wintry feel when we parted with Mark.  As our chat with him already held us up, we shortened our day in preparation for the likely storm coming.   

Whether by design or accident (I do not remember which now) we landed ourselves after only ten miles at Goodwin-Greene Cabin.  The cabin is part of the Braum hut system, which is much like the AMC huts of the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  When we first arrived, father and son from the state of Washington were there for the muzzle loading season, which had started after the bow season ended.  We trusted muzzle loaders similarly to bow hunters, equally adept at their craft and hospitable to hikers.  After eating supper they left the whole cabin to us while they camped out and scoped for game.

Inside the cabin we weathered a storm that dusted the higher elevations with snow, less than three weeks after we weathered a sandstorm in the desert.  We slept on mattresses near a wood stove and took advantage of the kitchen’s butter pecan syrup for our oatmeal in the morning.  We did not mind at all discovering we were a little bit sidetracked from the official ADT route.

Rather than backtrack the next morning we headed out cross country to rejoin the ADT at a high pass.  Orienteering to stay true to an obscure trail below treeline frustrates me, while orienteering over wide open high country invigorates me more than any other type of hiking.  How do I convey such a feeling?

Imagine your youthful desire for exploration, at least for those of us fortunate enough to grow up near natural landscapes.  First you explore your neighborhood, then the woods beyond your neighborhood, then perhaps the other side of the hill beyond those woods, increasingly expanding the boundaries of your freedom and curiosity.  Hiking cross country over alpine and subalpine lands extends these boundaries to their most independent, wild and beautiful limits.

The day started and ended with cross country work over high country, with a dip down in the middle to a mountain reservoir where we cooked lunch.  We met only two other hikers the whole day, a couple who were former NOLS instructors.  That gives you an indication of our remote location.  In fact, the alleged trail to follow near the end of the day disappeared through lack of use, which explains why we headed cross country over a 13,000’ pass.

Crossing the pass placed us on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, which we would cross two more times before permanently heading east away from the mountains.  The approach reminded me of another one coming from the other direction, not far away but 26 years ago.  After resupplying in Leadville, while staying in the firehouse during ten degree weather, the expedition I organized to hike the Continental Divide Trail left town to cross the divide.

Recent snowstorms presented about two feet of soft snow around between us and the pass, making the trail impossible to follow.  For some reason we were the only people crazy enough to be heading over the pass under these conditions, which meant we had to posthole a route up to the high altitude pass. As the leader I took on that grueling responsibility.  The image of looking back occasionally at my zig-zag path with the rest of the group determinedly following, remains vivid decades later.  On the one hand a very satisfying memory of cohesion and determination; on the other hand a memory that explains why we had just hiked through the Great Basin desert during the heat of summer.

That memory also recalled how Cindy could not keep up with me trudging up through the snow; nor could she keep up with me now on our cross country ascent.  Cindy had the most flawless stride of anyone I had the pleasure to hike behind.  Her efficiency enabled her to keep up with us taller folk effortlessly on mild terrain such as the desert, but climbing a mountain takes a good deal of lung power as well as leg power.

Twenty-six years ago we sat on our large packs and glissaded down the other side of the steep, snow-covered pass, a fun reward for our labors during the ascent.  Once we reached a level area we made camp before darkness approached.  That night Cindy and I kept our boots in our sleeping bags to keep them pliable during a night that dipped below zero.  The next morning my boots were fine while Cindy’s were stiff, despite having the same sleeping bag model.

Twenty-six years later the descent from our 13,000’ pass was instead the worst part of the day.  With still no obvious trail and no snow for glissading, we took a knee-shocking route down towards the treeline.  An added challenge was guessing where, once we came upon forest, the trail might finally appear.  Still, we had a satisfying day with a satisfying camp that evening … and our footgear did not freeze during the night.

When we reached Leadville I headed for the fire station, with hopes to revive the memory of the hospitality our Connecticut Continental Divide Expedition received in 1985.  Times changed and they declined to host us this time around.  However, on the way across town to the fire station a man out in his yard stopped us to find out what we were doing.  John Nicholas offered for us to stay at his place, but at the time we declined.  He then offered us twenty dollars but we declined that as well.  As we headed away he ran up to us, shouting that we dropped something.  In my outstretched hand he placed a twenty dollar bill and ran back before I could say anything.  We obviously had a place to stay when the fire station fell through.

While in Leadville I presented to my second college gig at Colorado Mountain College but, as was often the case during our journey, I received more information than I gave about kindness and community.  We also attended the vibrant community meals luncheon hosted at the St. George Episcopal Church.  I interviewed the director to discover why this program worked so well.  Ali Lufkin shared with us the three ingredients, plus the most memorable quote of our journey.

The community meals program worked to get people from all demographics attending the luncheons.  The mayor attended regularly; college faculty attended, as did students.  They also worked to get people from all demographics involved in the preparation of the meals, those well off and those downtrodden.  Finally, they required those preparing the meals to join those coming to eat the meals.  She summed up their philosophy with this quotable gem:

“We try to confuse who is giving and who is receiving.”

I see that now as the difference between community involvement, which has been waning in our country, and volunteerism, which has grown in response to the shrinking middle class and growing problems of poverty.  With volunteerism people are doing things for others; community involvement tackles similar goals by doing things with others.

As we continued across the country I inserted this quote into all my talks.  Colorado continued to feed one of our reasons for walking across the country with glowing examples of kindness and community.  I just hoped that when winter arrived our most important reason would not be undermined by the cold we had yet to face, which would affect Cindy more.

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The ADT Journey – Week 15

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

The Grand Mesa Plateau looms as a transitional landscape between canyons and mountains.  While called a mesa, the top of the plateau features aspen and other mountain vegetation covering undulating terrain, dotted with lakes.  The lakes we encountered transitioned between the pond like “lakes” found in the mountains of central Utah and the pure alpine lakes of the Rockies.  This transitional landscape was good enough to make us feel right at home, with the added bonus that we were full packing across the plateau, just like the good ol’ days.

We camped one of the nights with three bow hunters we first encountered earlier in the day.  You might think that hiking during bow season poses a risk, but I trust the bow hunter’s dedication to their sport.  I have no apprehension I will be shot by a yahoo bow hunter, given their expertise and the range of their arrows. Besides, every bow hunter we met between Grand Junction and Crested Butte provided us snacks and other forms of hospitality.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of yahoos in possession of rifles, with the numbers increasing over the decades.  A rancher shared his story with me of hunters from Denver paying him to hunt on his land.  They came back at the end of the day to pay him for the horse they shot, with deep apologies.  The rancher later discovered they really shot a cow elk instead, giving him in total two payoffs and a large cache of delicious elk meat.

We walked on both hiking and ATV trails across the Grand Mesa.  Blowdowns often littered the hiking trails due to neglected trail maintenance, though not as much as we encountered in Utah, where recent avalanches caused the blowdowns instead. In contrast to the trails, the ATV roads on the mesa were well-maintained.  A Forest Service ranger in the area for a field conference provided us the reason why.  ATVers invest more in their gear and recreation than hikers.  As part of that investment they put greater pressure on the Forest Service to respond to their needs; a squeaky wheel thing.

We encountered almost no litter on ATV roads in Colorado, in stark contrast to ATV roads in Utah.  A group of motorbikers provided us the reason for this as well. More locals recreate on the Colorado trails than the Utah trails; pride of ownership leads them to take care of their trails.

We descended off the Grand Mesa plateau to the town of Redstone, then ascended along Marble Creek into the mountains again along.  The ascent brought us all the way back to the mountain hiking we love, following a winding ribbon of pure water rushing through towering cathedrals on either side.  We capped off this heavenly hiking by camping on a small rise, overlooking an alpine lake, close by the mountain pass we just crossed.

The next morning we broke camp while witnessing in the distance a tow truck using a winch to pull a 4wd vehicle off a snow plug blocking the dirt road heading up towards the lake.  California in June featured 15’ minimum snowpacks; Nevada in July featured flooded open deserts; Utah in August featured massive blowdowns from avalanches and bloated creeks that could not be crossed with a Jeep; now Colorado in September featured a lingering snow plug from the previous season which likely existed until the new snow season began.

At least this anomaly posed no problem for us.  We easily made our way over the snow plug while the sheep-faced driver watched his quite literal “off road” vehicle being rescued.  From there we descended steadily down into the town of Crested Butte.

As we approached a crosswalk in town, a driver also approaching the sidewalk stopped in advance to let us pass.  After we crossed she drove beyond the crosswalk, turned her car around, parked her car near us and jumped out.

“I told myself never to pass up an interesting story!  You two look like you are doing something interesting.”

Before Delreena was done chatting with us she invited us to her house to stay, with Ky joining us.  This was a great start to what would be another terrific town stop for our public mission about kindness and community.  The community radio station interviewed us, as did the local paper, for whom I also provided both the scoop and photos of the vehicle conquered by a snow plug.

I interviewed Kevin McGruther,  the organizer of an initiative that tied together a farmer’s market with a food pantry.  Crested Butte lies high up in the Rockies and far from where most farmers grow their crops.  Rather than having to bring excess food back home from Crested Butte, the farmers participate in a “food for fees” program.  They give their excess food in lieu of a fee for participating in the market.  That healthy food is then provided to a food pantry.

Redstone also provided us inspiration in regards to the mission.  As an unincorporated town, the inhabitants of Redstone fulfill all the necessary functions of an incorporated town without compensation, with a vibrant result.  When we did our grocery shopping for our next stretch in a nearby town we met Joan, who bicycled around Colorado with her late husband to raise money for causes such as Alzheimer’s.  She was moved to tears by what we were doing, which in turn moved us to tears as well.

Grand Junction, Redstone and Crested Butte foreshadowed what to expect from the rest of our journey: people extending kindness to us; people extending kindness to each other; and communities taking care of their own.  I chose the American Discovery Trail for our journey, instead of a beloved wilderness trail, because the length would extend Cindy’s rejuvenation and because all the towns along the way provided a platform to speak.  I had no idea at the start how much the journey would further boost my belief in humanity.

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The ADT Journey – Week 14

Posted on September 21, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

The temperatures while we were in Grand Junction barely exceeded 100 degrees.  The natives considered this a heat wave and offered their sympathy to us having to endure such heat.  On the contrary we felt like we were in paradise!  After a couple weeks of hiking in 110-130 degree temperatures without a spot of shade, Grand Junction was a veritable oasis, complete with trees!

The “cooler” weather we experienced in Grand Junction added to the euphoria from the progress with our public mission about kindness and community.  I gave three presentations and two media interviews, including my first one for television..  Even more exciting were the four interviews of people in Grand Junction I conducted, gaining valuable new information for writings and presentations in the future.

In stark contrast to my recent interview with the Fruita Lions Club president, the Grand Junction Lions Club is one of the most vibrant in the country.  If you go by fundraising capability, the club ranks number one or two in the world, in annual competition with a Lions Club from Japan.  The attendance at my luncheon presentation about community involvement rivaled the combined attendance of all other Lions Club talks during the journey.  I felt a little sheepish lecturing to one of the most involved clubs in the world about community involvement, but they seemed to enjoy the talk.

From interviewing the club’s president I learned some of their strategies for remaining vibrant while many community organizations and involvement decline.  They discovered that more people, at least more young people, attend luncheon presentations, preferring to use their natural break from work over more time away from family at supper time or evening.  They also kept things fun, as evidenced at my presentation.  They combine their formal meeting notes with an informal roast of each other.  Their major fundraiser, a carnival, exemplified their fun approach.

While in Grand Junction I also learned about a student who started a Stay Positive movement in the area; the International Learning Adventures program at the college that combined outdoor adventure with humanitarian projects; a clothes exchange that operated much like a potluck; and a dedicated Sunday when all churches abandoned services to work on community projects.  Grand Junction stood out on our journey as a goldmine for information about kindness and community.

A day after leaving Grand Junction we found ourselves at the trailhead for the Kannah Creek trail.  The beginning of that trail marked the end of desert hiking during the two hottest months of the year.  The mountains dictated our seemingly insane schedule, stretching a journey out for a full year for the sake of rebooting our lives and Cindy’s brain health, while managing to avoid blizzards in the high mountains we would cross.  Yet the mountains remained our heart’s wilderness desire, the landscapes where we spent so much of our hiking experiences together.

The Kannah Creek Trail brought us a few thousand feet up into the Grand Mesa Plateau and the Colorado mountains.  We camped high up along Kannah Creek that first evening, watched a beautiful sunset from up high and snuggled through our first cool night since the Arc Dome wilderness in Nevada.  This was the tonic our desert scorched souls precisely needed.

We spent our next couple of nights at the Mesa Lakes Lodge, thanks to a connection made by Ky.  This was part of her role moving forward, making connections for places to stay.  Another evolving role for her would prove to be something like a kindness ambassador.  These roles would prove invaluable when we crossed the plains.

While at the lodge I interviewed the waitress there, who recently lived in a Grand Junction homeless shelter.  She confirmed that, at least since the economy’s downturn in 2008, many homeless people are just normal folks struggling to find enough employment in a wage stagnant nation.  At the Lodge her income was supplemented by room and board, thus overcoming one of the major problems with stagnant wages, rising housing costs.

During our ascent of the Kannah Creek Trail Cindy lost her cap.  She cooled herself during the climb by taking the cap off and holding it loosely in her hand.  Too loosely, since she sometimes lost focus on what was in her hands because of her cognitive decline, including her walking stick.  I had been able to spot and recapture her dropped items previously.  When we left the hospitality of the Lodge behind, the owner Steve gave Cindy a new cap.

We left the Lodge full packing the next stretch over the Grand Mesa Plateau to Redstone.  Though Cindy lost her focus and stuff at times; though she had yet to regain her natural cheerfulness in the mornings, we were now in our element, our home away from home.  Inspired by our mission regarding kindness and community, our roles as a team resolved, we left the troubles plaguing us behind in the desert and were ready for nine more months of hiking across the country.

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The ADT Journey – Week 13

Posted on September 10, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

Little do we know at times what impact our actions might have on others.  This would have been the case with my Moab Times Independent interview, if not for some serendipitous encounters on this next stretch.  As per my usual intent, the interview focused on the need for kindness and community, not our walk across the country.  As a tourist destination, Moab was ripe for this type of message.

Resort areas typically contain higher levels of homelessness.  You may have heard from your favorite economic interest group, or even an economic course, that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”  In regards to housing costs, rising tides lose out to spending cascades.  With increasing wealth disparity comes increased spending of disposable income by the wealthiest for the most exorbitant houses.  The inflated costs for housing at the top then cascades on down to the most modest homes.

Tourist destinations like Moab are most vulnerable to these spending cascades.  On the one hand they attract wealthy buyers for housing; on the other hand they supply a low-paying service job market for people who cannot afford the elevated housing costs.  My interview drew attention to this problem.

On our first day of leaving our Moab base camp for good I talked to a ranch caretaker who slept in her car.  The day after that, while waiting in the ghost town of Cisco for Ky to come along, three river guides spotted us while driving by with their transportation van and detoured to meet us.  They had read the news story about us and wanted to personally thank us for speaking out about their plight.

A BLM worker we met the day before also spotted us in Cisco earlier and gave us water.  We could have continued hiking at that point, but we would have missed the river guides that came around the same time as Ky.  We also needed to wait for Ky regardless to agree upon a destination for the end of the day.  When we could hike again we encountered 115 degree heat and a sandstorm in the open desert.  This was the first time I ever hiked through a desert sandstorm, in summer no less.  I do not recommend it.

This factored into the decision we made at our first campsite in Colorado to full pack the rest of the way into Grand Junction.  With a support vehicle this was wholly unnecessary, as we would be hiking on roads and going through towns the whole way, but we needed to be on our own at that point for peace of mind and reflection.  We had yet to confront Ky with our concerns, though she had confronted me with hers, but our decision spoke volumes.

Our first town stop was Fruita, where I had set up an interview with the Lions Club president.  While I gave news media interviews to provide information about kindness and community, I also conducted interviews during the journey to gather information.  In the case of the Fruita Lions Club I found out their involvement with the community was in steady decline.  The president felt that after he moved away in the near future the club would fold.  We stayed at a campground in Fruita that night.

We reached a mall in Redlands by lunch time the next day, where we stopped at an outdoor mall.  I caught up on emails first, with one of them coming from a reader of the Moab Times Independent article, thanking me for bringing attention to homelessness.  We then hit a Safeway supermarket for luncheon food, conversing with a grocery clerk on the way out.  He lamented living in a trailer because even a small, modest home was beyond his means.  By the time we were done talking he was almost ready to join us on our hike.

On our way to Fruita we encountered Dave, Marie and teenage son Zephyr, on their Saturday morning ride to the Utah border.  On their way back home they stopped again to give us their phone number, with an invitation to stay with them in Redlands.  Marie returned to us one last time to bring us Cokes from a store that we found out also offered free popcorn.

We also received an invitation from another bicyclist to stay at her home in Redland, but the family invitation came first.  In fact, while at the Redlands mall I received a call from Marie to check on whether we were coming and to make arrangements for picking us up at the mall.  Marie had bicycled across the country and the whole family was “our kind of people,” making for some enjoyable trail magic during our stay.

Our neighbors at the Fruita campground were Dan and Chris, two semi-professional golfers saving costs while playing in a nearby tournament.  Fresh off the sobering news of the Fruita Lions Club decline, I talked about our public mission with them.  We are a society in which volunteerism increases in response to issues of health, hunger and homelessness, but community involvement has decreased to paltry lows.  They encouraged me to give talks at colleges, reaching out to young adults who might change the future of community involvement.

We would see Dan again in Denver, but I took his advice immediately to heart in Grand Junction, where the first thing we did was hike onto the campus of Colorado Mesa University wearing our full packs.  On the way to the Outdoor Program’s office a social work instructor invited us in to speak to her class the next day. The director of the Outdoor Program arranged for us to be the first speaker of the semester for their Wednesday night programs.  These talks would be in addition to the talk previously scheduled for the Grand Junction Lions Club.

Because of that scheduled talk, the Lions Club put us up in a motel for one our nights in Grand Junction.  I chose this time to discuss with Ky her future.  Our delightful and meaningful three day stretch through a populated area reinforced my belief that we did not need support, for either our private or public mission.  Parked in front of our motel I opened with the projection that we would likely run out of funds for Ky by the time we reached the other side of Colorado.

This opened up the floodgates of grievances on both sides, with Ky hearing ours for the first time.  She conceded that she would be willing to stay at least for a while if the funds ran out.  Her concession was good enough for me to consider her as staying, and to problem solve towards that end.

Our blowup with Ky was the lowest moment of the journey, after traveling through the most stressful state for us in the hottest weather.  Yet during the stretch from Moab to Grand Junction our public mission increased in meaning and importance; moving forward from Grand Junction our roles in that mission would fall into place, including Ky’s.  The finances would work themselves out and I started feeling like Ky was “one of us.”  It appeared to me that Ky felt more like one of us as well, though the original “Thelma and Louise” bond she wanted with Cindy was not going to happen.

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The ADT Journey – Week 12

Posted on August 31, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

At our campground in Green River, Utah (melon capital of the country) we were visiting our campsite neighbors when Ky said to them:

“When the money runs out I am gone.”

That declaration came as a surprise, particularly since our neighbors were impressed with our journey and mission (the alleged mission, not the private one for Cindy).  Baking in the desert aside, Ky also enjoyed much of her experiences as a support person, from rides down huge sand mounds on dune buggies to making friends with locals.  She likely meant those words for me, expressing in effect that she did not feel like one of us.

Ky’s declaration provided me relief.  I spent the previous week “crunching the numbers” in my head during sizzling desert walks, concluding that we would indeed run out of money to fund our support.  Fortunately, first two months revealed that Cindy could handle hiking without support, sometimes better than me, while I assumed the role of contacting news media as my own publicist. Under ideal circumstances I would have wanted Ky to stay with us for the duration, ironically as one of us, and was dreading to break the news otherwise.  Now I was off the hook; the fact I felt such concerns and subsequent relief over finances perhaps confirmed Ky’s feeling that I was her employer and not her comrade.

Cindy reacted much differently to Ky’s declaration.  Besides other stressors already mentioned, Cindy resented our hiking regimen in the desert being tailored to meet Ky at a designated time.  Having been on supported journeys in the past, indeed, having been a support person herself, Cindy was accustomed to the support arriving first at a rendezvous point way ahead of time.  Instead, there were a couple times when we waited for Ky.  I understood that past support never had to wait in shadeless desert heat for hikers, but Cindy already felt that Ky was not one of us and the declaration just made that feeling worse.

We left Green River full packing for an overnight stretch on back roads, across shadeless Utah desert, with Barrett and Buster joining us for the first time since Nevada.  We carried the only water we would encounter for four meals, twenty miles of hiking and our camp.  I carried 1 ½ gallons, Cindy a gallon, and Barrett two gallons for him and Buster.  I suspect desert walking with us was tough on the little dog.  Barrett at times carried him around his neck.  Whenever we stopped for a break Buster would lie near me and the shade cast by my imposing external frame pack.  Barrett’s pack had to be heavier, but his was an internal frame.

Barrett was very low on water by the time we broke camp in the morning.  We decided the best strategy was to hike ahead at our own pace, rendezvous with Ky and have her drive back with us on dirt roads to bring Barrett water.  However, we got to the rendezvous point much earlier than we projected.  By the time we were able to reach Barrett he had almost reached the rendezvous point as well.  Fortunately, he was doing OK, perhaps due to his Desert Storm experience?  That would be the last time he hiked with us though.

We spent the next five days slackpacking, visiting National Parks in the area, giving a talk at the Moab Lions Club, doing an interview with the local newspaper, and strategizing how to hike the next stretch.  Gearheads, a local wilderness shop, gave us some free stuff and their own developed product, called Technical Lighting Solutions, to test out. Our hosts from the Lions Club, Dave and Marilyn, were an active couple much like us.  We spent our first enjoyable Moab evening with them before setting up a base camp at a BLM campground by the Colorado River.

Ky’s birthday occurred during our time in Moab.  I treated the visitation of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks as her birthday presents.  Tension filled the air, however.  Perhaps Ky wondered about my disregard of the fuel costs for these excursions, given our cash flow problem.

While in Moab we visited the BLM office with the goal of finding a way back towards the official ADT route.  This required finding places to stash water caches across an area known as the Dolores Triangle, and the means to stash them.  Ky would not be able to go into that desert backcountry with her minivan, but our campground host offered to help us out with his jeep.

Unfortunately, our plan to compensate for hiking across an area with no water was thwarted by too much water.  As we went to place the caches we discovered that a creek barring our way to the Dolores Triangle could not be crossed with a jeep, even in August, because of the large amounts of precipitation that year.  Our dependency on the support vehicle once again dictated our alternate route, which now would be into the Cisco desert, north of the ADT.

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The ADT Journey – Week 11

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

The first day of this week found us full packing through canyons in Capitol Reef National Park, with yet another thunderstorm lasting for hours.  The remaining days found us slackpacking along desert roads with nothing but sunny skies.

We managed to wait out the thunderstorm under a pavilion in Capitol Gorge.  Even with the protection I was a little apprehensive about flash flooding.  A flash flood through this same canyon reached seven feet during the deluge we experienced a few nights before.  Fortunately, the current storm did nothing more than delay our arrival to our rendezvous with Ky at the end of the day.

First the remainder of the gorge, then open lands, stretched between the park boundary and the road that was to be our destination.  The trail disappeared soon after the gorge but, no matter, we hiked mostly in a direct line towards the discernible road, still far in the distance.  Others must have gone a similar way, as we passed a sign propped up by farm equipment that read “WELCOME,” but we encountered a few obstacles that challenged the wisdom of our route.

Chief among the obstacles was a creek with a red clay bottom.  As I neared the far side of the crossing I sunk down fully up to my knees, like quicksand.  I pulled myself out with the help of a protruding root along the far bank, but even then the ordeal was exhausting.  Being of much less weight with body and pack Cindy fared better than me, but both our legs were covered with red clay after the crossing.

We reached the road near dusk, looking dirty and bedraggled.  We had insufficient energy to guess which way we should walk on the road to meet Ky and waited for her to come and find us.  A mother and daughter team pulled up to us first and invited us to stay at her parent’s bed and breakfast place down the road.  Taralyn was caretaking the place while her parents were on vacation.  During this conversation Ky arrived with news that Barrett and a friend who was visiting were back at the camp.  She went back to retrieve everyone for a rest day at the B&B.

Emma and Taralyn to the Rescue!

Taralyn had experienced recent hardship in her life as a single mother whose house burned down.  The touching display of community support for her plight moved her to look for ways of paying it forward.  We became the latest beneficiaries of her Good Samaritan zeal.  Of course, this became one of the experiences that I would bring up in my future talks.

We left Taralyn’s great hospitality to slackpack our way across Utah desert, with the desert heat aggravating tensions between us.

Ky felt uncomfortable in the originally intended role of being my publicist/agent for the talks I gave across the country.  As I took over the role of being my own publicist the talking points I provided to news media focused on the kindness and community experienced, not the hiking or Cindy’s affliction.  One time when prompted to share details about our hike by a print media outlet, my neglect to mention Ky as our support person disappointed her.  I acknowledged this as a mistake, but something else also irritated her.

Ky felt we should have contacted and included her in the invitation to the dude ranch.  In our previous hikes with others, people in different situations experienced different trail magic and tribulations.  Instead of including everyone in everything, these varied experiences made for good stories to share when together again.  Plus the circumstances of the trail magic would have seemed like applying a bait and switch move on our benefactor.  I never thought about asking to include Ky and, in this case, did not acknowledge my neglect as a mistake.

Our finances stressed me.  My original calculations of cost were based on fuel for a single support vehicle.  The extra costs of chipping in for Ky’s camper, plus the extra fuel costs this meant, led to yet another cost of purchasing merchandise to sell along the way.  This included T Shirts, CDs of my songs about community and freedom, and a book I had published.

The idea was by selling this merchandise at talks I could cover the extra costs generated by the camper.  With a bit of foresight I might have realized I would not be giving many talks during the wilderness portion of our journey and be patient that our fortunes would turn around once we hit the plains.  Instead I sometimes gave away the merchandise to the abundant trail angels we met, a businessman I am not, while fretting about what to do when we ran out of funds for Ky.

Embarking on yet another detour also irritated me.  The previous detours were brought about by adverse weather and trail conditions experienced along the way.  When they added miles that felt like proper penance for deviating from the designated route.  The spectacular scenery through Hell’s Backbone would have made that recent detour a  planned detour anyways.

The detour we took after Capitol Reef NP was not so spectacular.  Based on the unimproved roads we had experienced so far, having Ky meet us with water through southeast portions of Utah was impossible with the camper attached, and difficult even if detached and stowed.  We absolutely depended on meeting Ky for water while hiking through the remote desert in summer and had to take a northern detour that brought us north to Green River, then back south to Moab.

Having experienced the slot canyons of southeast Utah previously, I wanted to follow the ADT route through there.  I also did not like that this detour would be shorter.  Because we were hiking home from the end of the ADT, tacking on a few hundred miles, we were in no real danger of falling below 5,000 total miles for the journey, but reaching that milestone was important for me.

Cindy’s stress was caused foremost by our “halfway house” back home.  To shorten a long story and omit delicate details, three people around the ages of our own children were staying at our house, while our oldest daughter Charissa served as landlord.  Two were delinquent in paying rent, a source of stress for our daughter and me, and I could not help out because of our own financial challenge on the trail.  The delicate details I omitted about our “halfway house” caused even greater stress for Cindy.

Before, during and after the brief visit of Ky’s friend Jenny, Ky spoke in glowing admiration about her pursuit as a graduate student looking for dinosaur fossils across the Utah landscape.  This seemingly innocuous praise of Jenny as an amazing Adventure Woman living out of her car irritated Cindy, the Expedition Woman who has bivouacked and navigated cross country wilderness routes on her own.  I do not think this would have bothered Cindy under normal conditions, but the feeling of one’s independence and capabilities being robbed by the cruel fate of cognitive decline causes a person to perceive unintended slights.

For the first two months of hiking Cindy started the day lifting both our spirits with her cheerful embrace of the day. On this stretch that changed. Weighed down by her stress, I detected few smiles from Cindy. Given that the purpose of the hike was to relieve her stress this concerned me. I tried to compensate, being as cheerful as I could in the morning, but by afternoon the desert heat compromised my mood as well.

The temperatures no doubt made moods worse.  One night during this stretch barely fell below 100 degrees, and one day a DOT worker stopped us while road walking to check if we were alright and to tell us we were hiking in 132 degree heat.  Yet at least by this time the desert heat did not phase us physically.  I came up with a strict, regimented routine of stopping every three miles to imbibe small quantities of water and food, generally finishing the 20-25 mile days by 2:00 pm.  We may have been cranky and stressed, but we were now lean, mean, desert hiking machines.

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The ADT Journey – Week 10

Posted on August 8, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

We carried full packs for all but the first day of this week, including a five day “wilderness” stretch that started without wilderness.  We had only five miles to hike from our Otter Creek State Park campsite through Antimony but we never quite reached the trail on the other side of town.  In fact, we did the unthinkable for a long distance hiker, backtracked two miles even though we knew we were on the correct route.

We first stopped at the Antimony Community Center, where the director there explained how the center provides Internet access for townsfolk.  Far off the beaten track, electricity reached Antimony last in Utah and Internet access was similarly difficult.  By providing Internet access the Community Center offered a means for telecommuting in this remote place.  These were the types of community benefit stories I loved to gather.

We stopped next at the Antimony Merc, a combined RV park, gas station, cafe, store and local hangout.  We mixed well with the locals, with one of them giving us some helpful details of the route ahead.  We also learned that Barrett and Buster had passed through town the morning before.  We had not seen them since our first day in Utah and now we did not expect to see them again until Moab.

Despite our lollygagging through Antimony we might have entered the wilderness that evening had not a car pulled over, when we reached the southern outskirts of town, to ask us what we were doing.  This same car had passed us going back and forth into Antimony a couple times.  We told the driver, Burns Black, about our journey and he invited us to stay at his Rockin’ R Ranch on the northern side of Antimony.  Staying at a dude ranch for free was an offer too good to refuse and we backtracked two miles.

We had planned for four relaxing days through Dixie National Forest, with the first day being the hardest. Before ascending all day we took a wrong turn and had to backtrack.  Fortunately, this enabled us to encounter Randy, the Otter Creek campground manager who also owned a ranch in the area, driving his ATV with Ky riding on the back!  News travels fast in a small town, alerting Randy and Ky to our delay in reaching Dixie National Forest.  Randy also used his ATV to bring soda to our campsite that evening.  Though we followed jeep roads all day Randy’s arrival amazed me because the route was as rocky and steep as mountain trails in the Northeast.

Once again the most memorable parts of this stretch were the camps.  A ferocious thunderstorm accompanied by a deluge held off until nighttime for us.  Safely tucked away in a perfectly pitched tent kept us dry, providing the luxury of enjoying the sounds of pelting rain and thunder.  We no longer talked like we used to do under these conditions, but the night would become a special memory along with the other severe storms we weathered over the years.

A photo of my left foot hanging in traction that night confirmed my ongoing problem.  I found that the swelling went down during the day while hiking, but would return at night.  I resorted to ibuprofen and elevated traction for my foot in order to get some sleep.

Another campsite on this stretch ranked in the top five for the journey.  After crossing Dixie National Forest a campground host tipped us off to what he described as an oasis in Sheets Draw.  We found this to be accurate.  A small, flat, grassy area by a clear flowing stream over red clay, with a lone cottonwood tree as a standing sentry, provided a stark, green garden contrast to the surrounding canyon walls of red sandstone.  A little sputtering of rain interrupted the cooking of supper, but even that intrusion upon our tranquility left us with a rainbow that further enhanced the setting.

At one point within the Dixie National Forest we were to follow the Great Western Trail, but within the first few hundred yards we encountered a few blockades of blowdowns, no doubt another casualty of the extraordinary snowpack and avalanche season.  We followed instead the recommended alternative ADT for cyclists, which brought us through the canyonlands known as Hell’s Backbone.  The spectacular scenery made our detour a preferred option to even a cleared trail.

All in all, this stretch of full packing through wilderness melted much of our cares away.  These were the best of times, when Cindy and I were off by ourselves in what might be considered our natural habitat as veteran long distance hikers.  Unfortunately, more stressors loomed in the future which were immediate to our situation.

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The ADT Journey – Week 09

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

Utah started out well enough, a beautiful campsite with a gorgeous sunset our first night in the state, a motel room comped to us the third night, both scouted and obtained by Ky.  While the day temperatures exceeded 100 degrees, they now felt twenty degrees cooler. One might think that going home for a wedding would be good news as well.

Ky brought us to Salt Lake City to fly back east for the first of two weddings we would be attending on Cindy’s side of the family. We arrived in New York City, where the temperature also reached 100 degrees while we were there, except that the much greater humidity made 100 degrees really  feel like 100 degrees.  We took public transit to the wedding being held in Westchester County, with an assist from our kids picking us up at the station.  All told we spent a little more than a day back east and only took three days off the trail.

People occasionally cannot attend family weddings; one might think that hiking through the Great Basin desert on a year long journey might would be one such reason.  The expense of leaving the trail to attend both weddings hurt our finances, having already spent down retirement savings to reboot our lives.  Cindy did not want to go to these weddings despite them being on her side of the family; the decision to go was mine.

Why was I more motivated to attend?  At our send off party one of Cindy’s siblings admonished that I better take care of her.  Her family’s concern reflects what I discovered society as a whole feels.  Hiking 5,000 miles with a loved one experiencing cognitive decline was crazy behavior.  I hoped that showing up at these family weddings would appease their concerns.

During one conversation near the buffet table (where, as a long distance hiker, I spent much of my time), a few of her siblings reiterated their concerns.  Cindy also was aware of their thoughts which, in hindsight, was probably the major reason why she did not want to attend. If only I had listened!

Our return to the trail found us leaving desert terrain and hiking over mountains.  At first we were on dirt roads with no worries.  In Beaver we stopped at a ranger station for a scouting report, to see if the trails through Fish Lake National Forest were like Nevada trails, poorly maintained at times to the point of nonexistence.  The rangers informed us that the South Fork of South Creek route we would be taking had been cleared recently, but then I eavesdropped on a phone conversation where a ranger was telling someone about closed trails due to avalanches.

We hiked on cleared trail along the South Fork of South Creek as promised, experiencing 2.5 miles of pleasant ascending, simply placing one foot in front of the other.  We made camp just before the pass.  The next day, on the other side of the pass, we descended somewhere along the Old Government Trail.  I say “somewhere along” because four miles of intermittent blowdowns littered the actual trail, exhausting us by the time we reached the other side.

Just as a wet year created 15’ minimum June snowpacks in California, and summer flooding of Nevada deserts, Utah achieved 600 percent of normal snowpack.  This anomalous year replenished previously depleted aquifers in the state, but for us meant an abundance of blowdowns from avalanches that a trail crew may or may not reach before us.  Unlike Nevada, where trail conditions were due to lack of maintenance, I could not complain about what fate dealt us.  As usual, Cindy never complained about the hiking either, though she was not as chipper as she had been in California and Nevada.

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The ADT Journey – Week 08

Posted on July 27, 2021 by Humanity Hiker

During our rest days in Ely we caught up with Barrett Jordan and his dog Buster, also hiking the ADT from west to east.  I first learned about Barrett when we entered Nevada and he contacted me via the blog not to drink the water as we exited Virginia City.  During our “Trail Angel Day ” one of the “angels” informed us that Barrett had laid over in Belmont, which suggested he was behind us.  We were pleasantly surprised when we met the only other person doing what we were doing that year.

The ailing economy cost Barrett his IT job and hiking the ADT was his answer.  Besides his IT training Barrett had a variety of handyman skills and served in Desert Storm.  We caught up to him in part because he stopped to do handyman work to support his hike, in part because he carried an even heavier pack than ours.  Food for Buster and the superfluous gear of a first-timer with military training contributed to his pack weight.

Fortunately for Barrett over the next few days he could shed his backpack as he hooked up with us to slackpack the rest of Nevada.  As a lover of dogs Cindy was thrilled to have Buster along.  Buster was a mix of breeds but looked like an oversized chihuahua to me.  At times Barrett slung Buster over his shoulder but, even without carrying the dog, his natural pace was slower than ours.  Perhaps this was due to being a smoker?

Our first night out of Ely we stayed at Cave Lake campground.  The only other lake we encountered in Nevada was Washoe Lake at the foot of the Carson Range, near Nevada’s western border.  Cave Lake signaled the foothills of the South Snake Mountains, by Nevada’s eastern border.  Barrett and Ky swam in the refreshing lake shortly after our arrival.  I could not muster the energy to join them, totally out of character for a guy who twice broke the ice in alpine lakes to take a dip.  I faulted the still lingering lethargy from bad water.  I could hike 25 mile days in 100 degree heat, presumably by placing myself on autopilot, but would still feel lethargy for a couple more days.

After dinner I grabbed from the support vehicle my Martin backpacker’s guitar, which I brought along for performing at Lion Clubs talks.  As I sat on the picnic table and played an original instrumental, “Humility, Faith and Courage,” a man from the campsite above us came running down enthusiastically and said:

“I just had to see where that beautiful music was coming from …. Barrett!”

The man was Ted Oxborrow, then the Nevada ADT coordinator, who was at Cave Lake in support of Brian Stark, speed record holder for hiking the ADT, as he attempted to set a new speed record hiking the Nevada section.  Ted had come out to assist Barrett in central Nevada and recognized him at our campsite immediately.  Now he was supporting Brian Stark, record holder for fastest hike of the entire ADT. He invited us up to his campsite where perhaps a historical photo was taken of four thru-hikers in the same place on the sparsely hiked ADT at the same time.

Four ADT Hikers – Cindy, Kirk, Brian, Barrett

Our last few days in Nevada went smoothly, alternating between foothills and desert valley, with no further rain.  Even so, our last few miles heading south from Baker was along the strange sight of flooded desert in late July. This final portion of Nevada also headed us directly into southerly winds so strong they bent over trees, but no longer did we suffer from chapped lips or heat exhaustion.  We had acclimated to the desert.

In response to my blog posts about hiking through Nevada I received requests from both sides of our families to hear from Cindy.  This came across as a little strange.  Though we had not made Cindy’s affliction public in regards to the hike our families knew something was wrong.  I dutifully asked Cindy if she wanted to contribute to the blog and she predictably declined.  Even if she accepted, at this stage of the hike I would be forced to dictate her entries for my blog as I did for her own journal.

Yet there were two positive developments for Cindy’s health as we hiked through Nevada.  Hiking with Barrett actually elicited conversation from her, hearkening back to her old thru-hiking days when she was known as “Gabby Galvin.”  Plus having Buster along brought great cheer to a long time dog lover.

One moment in central Nevada best reflected the tonic for Cindy our hike had become.  As I sat struggling with the maps, trying to figure out why the trail disappeared again and which pass we should cross, Cindy pursued her interests in flowers and rocks.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me: We are lost again.

Cindy:  Look at these beautiful wild flowers!

Me:  I’m not sure where the next water source will be.

Cindy:  Oh, I love the colors on this rock. I’ll add it to my collection.  (Cindy was the only thru-hiker I knew that voluntarily put rocks in her pack. Usually that resulted from pranks thru-hikers played on each other.)

Me:  We’re going to die out here!

OK, so that last part was hyperbole.  Nevertheless, so far all the stress from the journey fell on my shoulders, while removing the stress we thought responsible for Cindy’s alleged anxiety disorder.  Returning to our passion for long distance hiking to reboot our lives and Cindy’s brain health might be working!!

At least for now.  Utah would be a different story.

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