Day 56: 11 June, 11.5 miles today, 809.3 miles total, just outside Rio Grande NF, CO
I woke up just after 0200hrs to the sound of Sean Meadow tossing and turning and whimpering beside me. “Hey,” I said, “what’s the matter?” “I don’t feel good,” she replied. Instinctively, I gently placed the back of my hand on her forehead and could feel right away that she had a fever. “You’re burning up,” I said, “you should take some ibuprofen.” “There’s no water in this room,” she said. I did not see this as an insurmountable obstacle—but then I wasn’t the one who was sick. I got out of bed and returned a couple of minutes later with a big glass of water and a couple of pills. We managed eventually to fall back asleep for a few hours, and when I felt Sean Meadow’s forehead again as I got up at 0630, I could tell that the fever had broken. She wasn’t feeling great, she reported, but she felt like she was up to hiking out as planned, and she wanted to try.
We were meeting our ride back to the trail at the Chillin’ Internet Café just up the street from our cabin. We dressed and packed up our gear in a flurry of activity in the small space and left one by one for the café. Sean Meadow and I had a couple of grocery bags worth of goodies to drop off at the RV park along the way, where we’d heard there was a hiker box—a place where hikers can put unneeded food and usable excess gear for others to claim and use. Once we got to the café, I ordered my breakfast and sat down with the others, where I learned that Sean Meadow wasn’t the only one under the weather. Unknown was also feeling pretty run down, but like Sean Meadow he wanted to try to hike. I overheard the two of them talking: they were pretty sure they didn’t have Covid, since they could both still smell and taste. But just to be safe, they insisted that would ride in the bed of the truck.
When 0830 rolled around, I was surprised to see K. waiting outside with a couple with whom I’d hiked 1/3 of the PCT in 2018, Spa Day and Speedy. Apparently she’d been staying in the same hotel across town as them and had decided to join forces. It seemed an odd pairing to me, but if it worked for them, I certainly wouldn’t have anything to say against it. Apparently, while they were hiking the CT the year before, Spa Day and Speedy had gotten rides from the same trail angel who had offered to shuttle my group back to the trail. It was good collection of humans, but unfortunately all the people gifted with the ability to make small talk had ended up in the bed, and the 17 miles up to the trailhead was distinctly awkward and peppered with uncomfortable silences.
We survived, and made it back to the trail to start a brutally steep climb in the sort of heat we hadn’t previously experienced at any point about 11,000’, let alone at 0930hrs. It was evident pretty quickly that Unknown wasn’t doing well. A typically fast hiker, he was usually at the head of the pack. This morning, however, he was steadily dropping back and struggling to catch his breath. Once we had made it to the top of the climb and were waiting for others to come up, it wasn’t terribly surprising to learn that he’d turned around to head back to town—though it was very disappointing. We found out later that he’d gotten a ride in a pickup almost right away, and had once again insisted on riding in the bed. An hour or so later, Elf received a message on his inreach that he tried to relay to the rest of us through an indecipherable shout none of ahead of him on trail could understand. We waited for him to catch up, and he gave us the news. “I just got a message from Unknown,” he said. “He has Covid.”
“Well. Fuck.” We stood beside the trail for several moment pondering what this might mean. If Unknown had Covid, that almost certainly meant that Sean Meadow did as well. PA, Elf, and I might all have been fine, but we’d been living in close contact with them and had absolutely been exposed even if weren’t sick. We looked at our options. At that point, it would only take a couple of hours to get back to the road, but if Sean Meadow and I elected to press on, we could bail from the CDT the following day to Creede—using the trail we’d previously eschewed when we chose to stick to the CDT red line. Sean Meadow wanted to keep pressing forward, which we did. By mid-afternoon, however, she was really dragging, and by late afternoon she had to stop regularly and sit down before continuing on. By the time we got into camp, it was all but certain we’d be bailing to Creede the next day. But first things first, we had to fill her full of soup and get her into the tent. The rest we’d figure out in the morning.
In a way, it almost sort of seemed inevitable. America as a whole had pretty much given up trying to do a single goddamn thing to contain or limit the pandemic—and we ourselves had grown less careful along with everyone else, despite the fact that case numbers had been rising throughout the country but particularly in Colorado and New Mexico. We had spent the last 27 months dodging the illness across three separate continents and any number of novel circumstances—frequently in territory that was openly hostile to any public health measure—but it looked as if Covid had finally caught up with us on the CDT.
Day 57: 12 June, 2.8 miles today (+3.0 miles on the Creede Cutoff route, not added to total), 812.1 miles total, Creede, CO
Creede Quarantine: Day 01
Sean Meadow’s response, after her alarm had gone off and she promptly went back to sleep and I had gently woken her up and asked her, “how do you feel?” was a mumbled “yes.” Her reply the second time I asked was, “can we sleep in for a little while?” which honestly should have been answer enough. If she felt well enough to hike a full day, then, no, we couldn’t really sleep in since we needed to cover the 90 miles to Salida before our food ran out. If she didn’t, though, it didn’t matter, since we’d be bailing to Creede, which was only 13 miles from camp. If it took days to get there, we’d still be fine. I’d been awake for an hour before the alarm went off, though, waiting for an answer to this question; so I asked one more time. “Right now, I feel okay. But the real question is how I’ll feel hiking uphill. Then we’ll know.” Fair enough.
We’d know soon enough; the day began with a long steep climb, the sort of uphill that leaves you gasping for air with each step as the weight of your pack seems to drag you backwards. At first, things seemed to be going okay. Sean Meadow left camp 15 minutes before I did, and for the longest time she remained little more than a colorful dot on the slope above me. By the time I caught up her about 3/4 of the way to the top, however, she was in rough shape, moving slowly, each step clearly taking a great deal of effort. Usually a much stronger hiker than me, she was struggling with an incline that I’d found difficult, but not life-altering. We took a break at the pass and discussed our options, but what we were going to do was already pretty clear.
About a mile later, we came to the junction with the Creede Cuttoff, the low-elevation shortcut we had once considered using to bypass the San Juans. Elf and PA were there, waiting for us—ostensibly taking a break after the steep climb, but really there to see which way we were going to go. We’d made the choice they were expecting, and though they were disappointed to see the group splinter even further, they supported the decision. We said our farewells, hopeful that they’d prove to be temporary, but aware that there are never any such guarantees on a thru-hike. “And then there were two,” Sean Meadow said as they stood up to hike on. K. had latched on to Spa Day and Speedy, Shorty was still working his way back to trail from his cross-state Tinder date, Unknown was holed up in Lake City trying to avoid contact with any and everyone, and now we were setting off for Creede. Heading north on the red line, PA and Elf were all that remained of us.
We had a pleasant walk on the Creede Cutoff, scoring a ride with a friendly young tech bro—the sort of trail-running peak-bagging jock-type stereotypical of Colorado transplants—before the dirt road became nightmarishly steep on its last few miles into town. The young man was a QA engineer working in Denver, whose earnest enthusiasm for the state’s summer trails and winter powder was both wholesome and infectious. We talked about climbing 14ers and hiking the CDT, Sean Meadow and I both masked and sitting next to opened windows, until he had to stop the car for a few minutes beside an old, abandoned mine. He’d cooked the brakes coming down the mountains, and had to let them cool before he could take us the last half mile into town.
He let us off in the small downtown area, where we set about trying to nail down our first priority: finding a place to stay. That turned out to be surprisingly difficult, as Creede, it turned out, was the answer to the question “what would Lake City be like if it was less scenic and more expensive, had less charm and fewer places to stay, and was essentially a trailer park mining town whose only reflection of the transition from mineral extraction to tourism was the fact that everything in town cost three times what it was worth?” The two “affordable” hotels, with rooms in the $150/night range, were booked. We didn’t bother trying to figure out if the $350/night place had any vacancies.
That left us with two options: we could stay with a local trail angel, who let hikers stay in a trailer on his property for a voluntary donation, or camp at the local little-league field. If either of us actually had Covid, then sharing a small space like trailer would be unconscionable. So we walked to the ball field and pitched the tent in one of the dugouts, for protection from both the sun and ferocious wind Coloradans continued to insist was the sort of thing that never happened in their state.
It was boring, but at least the ground was level and we were out of the weather. I got some terrifically mediocre food to-go from a local bar and grill, and spent the afternoon watching old episodes of The Office on my phone, while Sean Meadow watched something on hers and occasionally dozed. We were here so that she could rest and recover. The circumstances were less than ideal, but the CDT had ever thus far been a series of choices between undesirable options. If we’d learned anything from the trail, though, it was that in the end, we’d figure out how to deal with it. Whatever happened, we’d find a way to manage.
Day 58: 13 June, 0.0 miles today, 812.1 miles total, Creede, CO
Creede Quarantine: Day 02
When the sprinklers in the ballpark came on at 0500hrs, the sound of the air being purged from the lines was omnipresent and deafening, like a large rake being pulled roughly through gravel. My first thought was that we were under attack by locals brandishing garden implements and a cultivated hatred of outsiders taking advantage of their community by camping for free on public grounds. It took me a few disoriented seconds to figure out what was actually happening—or about until droplets of water started spraying the side of the tent facing the grass.
Even though there was no need for an early start to the day, getting restful sleep after that was fairly difficult, and mostly I just lay in the tent and listened to the sound of the sprinklers deploying first on one end of the field and then the other. After a couple of hours, I got up and walked the half mile to the gas station, thinking that was the cheapest and easiest breakfast option I had. And maybe it was, but I was nonetheless appalled to discover at check out that the microwave Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits I’d picked up from under the heat lamp were $5 apiece. Perhaps I should have refused to pay that much for the kind of low-quality bottles that usually retail for less than half that much; perhaps I should have stormed out. Instead, I shrugged my shoulders and paid up. I’d been Creeded again.
While were very nearly sure that Sean Meadow had Covid, she wanted the cold comfort of certainty, so she made sure she was standing in front of the Mineral County Health Center (MCHC) the moment it opened at 0800hrs. Talking to someone as soon as the clinic opened, she was then informed that the office that performed Covid testing didn’t open until 1000. After killing a couple of hours with me in the dugout, she returned to the clinic, where she was finally tested and our suspicions were confirmed. Sean Meadow had Covid.
Then it was my turn. Since we weren’t sure when we’d be leaving and since we didn’t want to leave all our earthly belongings unattended in a public park, we had to go one at a time. I called from outside the building, and was directed to wait at a picnic table by the shady side of the building with my mask on until someone came out to talk to me. When they did, I was informed that the person who did the actual testing would be leaving soon. I was then handed a package with a pair of at-home Covid tests and sent on my way.
I had to use them in the bathroom at the ballpark, since by then the forceful daily winds every Colorado local insisted were actually out of the ordinary despite their ubiquity had picked up, and trying to keep all the tiny test pieces from blowing away would have been impossible. I also, according to the instructions on the box, had to take both tests, since I didn’t have any symptoms. So I spent a merry half and hour in the mens room, sticking things up my nose and squirting drops on a little pregnancy test-style display. Both tests came back negative. Somehow, I still hadn’t caught the virus.
While I was dealing with all of that, Sean Meadow, hunkering down in a tent being blown about by the steadily increasing wind, had gotten fed up with ballpark living—which was fair, as it wasn’t exactly an ideal location for convalescence. When I came back, she’d acquiesced to her mom’s offer to pay for a hotel, and had booked one of the “cheaper” rooms in town, which would finally become available that afternoon. So it was that at midday, we left the shelter from which we’d listened to a series of middle-class parents trying to explain to their children why people were living in the park, packed up and moved into a cute, well-furnished place in the touristy block of Creede.
I was getting antsy—and I knew that Sean Meadow and Unknown felt, if anything, even more anxious to get back on trail than I did. June was well underway, and we still had close to 2,000 miles between us and the Canadian border. The snows of autumn and the work contracts we’d signed were still tiny dots in the distance, but they were slowly growing larger and more defined. The powder in this part of Colorado was all but gone; now was the time to start pushing miles, or we would never finish the trail. But we wouldn’t be going anywhere while Sean Meadow was still sick, and if we went back out too soon we only risked worsening her condition and being forced to take even more time off. It was time to fly, but we’d have to sit on wings for a bit, hoping that when the time was right, we would really be ready to soar.
Day 59: 14 June, 0.0 miles today, 812.1 miles total, Creede, CO
Creede Quarantine: Day 03
The only question that really mattered was how Sean Meadow was feeling, since that would pretty much determine the course of our day. We were both hopeful when we went to bed that she’d wake up feeling refreshed and whole and ready to return to the trail, but when she woke up, the first words out of her mouth in the morning were “Uhhhhhhh, I feel terrible.” We’d be staying in Creede another day.
She contacted the proprietress of the hotel to see if the room we’d asked about the evening before was still available, and was told that, indeed, it was not. It didn’t seem terribly likely that someone had felt a burning midnight need to visit the town of Creede on a Tuesday, more likely it was result of the hotel’s byzantine booking system. In theory, every room had been taken the night we stayed there, but never once heard another living soul in the building, saw anyone in the hallways or common area, or noticed that anyone but us was depleting the stock of cookies, oatmeal, biscotti, and chips in the kitchen—this last we raided often enough that if anyone else was staying in the building, we’d have been bound to run into them eventually, but we neither saw nor heard anyone. And yet there wouldn’t be room for us once check-out rolled around. Once again, we were relegated to pitching a tent at the ball field.
It was not exactly a joyful homecoming, and by this point we’d both been so soured on the town and everything in it that we’d given up on every local establishment as, at best, a mediocre rip-off. Rather than drop another $60 on a pizza and salads best described as “fine,” we just stopped by the grocery for some boxed mac n cheese to make in the dugout, and called it good. We were just lucky that no little league games—or activity of any sort—ever seemed to happen at the field.
I was struck as the park came into sight by the fact that adjacent to the ball field was a skate park. I’d noticed every day that we were town that not a single skater ever used it, but seemingly every parent brought their children there to play. It was as perfect a metaphor for Creede as I could imagine: a town with a skatepark but no skaters; a community of children making do without a proper playground. We’d be leaving in the morning, regardless of how either of us felt physically. Sean Meadow had finally reached the point where she’d rather hike sick than spend another day in that damned park. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, but even if we crawled at a snail’s pace all the way to Salida, we’d be damned if we’d waste any more time or money in that hole. Come hell or high water; come covid or the gale-force wind every local pretended wasn’t a daily occurrence, we would return to the CDT in the morning. Just see if we wouldn’t.
