Colorado Trail: Waterton Canyon to Durango

Twenty-six days and 486 miles from Denver to Durango, through one of the wettest summers Colorado has had in recent memory.

The trail is wet by the first morning. Not wet like there was rain last night — wet like the ground has been saturated for weeks and has stopped pretending otherwise. By the end of August 2022, this was the condition of most of the Colorado Trail’s northern sections: lush past the point of novelty, streams running hard, afternoon lightning arriving earlier each day.

Segment 2, looking south. The sky was doing this most mornings by the time we were a few miles in.

I’d just finished two years as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland. A clean ending, a good run. My high school friend and I had been loosely planning a long trail for a while, and this felt like the right window. We flew into Denver on August 20th, drove to the Waterton Canyon trailhead the next morning, and started walking south.

The Colorado Trail covers 486 miles, roughly 89,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain, and crosses eight wilderness areas. The average elevation is around 10,000 feet. In a wet year it adds a ninth unofficial feature: mud that functions as suction.

The first of many stream crossings. 2022 had La Niña moisture patterns through the summer, which translated to creek crossings that had no business existing at that width.

We were doing about 19 miles a day, which at elevation is sustainable but leaves limited room for error. The first week — Waterton Canyon through the South Platte drainage, into the Kenosha and Georgia Pass sections — we were mostly just getting our legs and learning how early to break camp to beat the afternoon lightning. The answer turned out to be: earlier than you think, and also it doesn’t always matter.

Twin Lakes Reservoir, near Leadville. Day four or five. This is the low point of the trail before it climbs back into the Collegiate Peaks.

One of the unnamed lakes above 11,000 feet in the Collegiate Peaks section. The water was cold enough that filtering felt unnecessary and also extremely necessary.

The Collegiate Peaks and the stretch near Leadville were the middle of the first week going well. The trail was well-marked and the terrain was what you’d call sustained — not dramatic, just relentless climbing and descending at altitude. We were carrying around 3,200 calories a day. That sounds like a lot. It is not a lot.

High camp somewhere in the segment south of Leadville, around 11,500 feet. The weather window that evening was about forty minutes.

The weather pattern was consistent: clear through about 11am, building cumulus by noon, lightning by early afternoon, clearing by 4 or 5pm. On a good day, you got a spectacular sunset out of it.

Somewhere in the Cochetopa Hills section, late afternoon. A small unnamed tarn in the foreground; a storm cell moving east off the San Juan ridgeline. We’d already made camp.

On a bad day, you were still moving through it at 2pm on an exposed ridge, which is its own education in the physics of open terrain. We got rained on for 4–5 consecutive days at least twice. The section through the Weminuche Wilderness — the largest wilderness in Colorado and the last major one before Durango — had stretches where the tread had turned to six inches of mud. You walked through it.

My friend and me, somewhere in the San Juan section around day twelve. The mountains in the background are part of the Needle Mountains group in the Weminuche.

The food situation deserves its own entry in the debrief. Most ultralight thru-hike planning optimizes for calories-per-ounce: olive oil packets, nut butter, freeze-dried meals with names like “Mountain House Chicken & Rice” that suggest a relationship with chicken and rice that the product cannot substantiate. We were eating this, more or less, for most of 26 days.

By week three I was hungry in a way that had moved past urgency into something quieter and more constant. Not dangerous. Just present at all times, like a background process that never terminates.

A gas station sandwich, somewhere near a road crossing in the San Juan section. I don’t remember what it was. I remember that it was correct.

The resupply towns on the southern half — Lake City, Silverton, and the road crossings near Creede — each got a longer visit than we planned. This is typical and also rational. The San Juans are the best terrain on the trail and they come at you when your food motivation is highest.

The scrub oak and aspen in the final San Juan sections were already turning in early September. Colorado altitude compresses the seasons.

A Colorado Trail sign somewhere in the southern sections. At this point in the trip the packs were lighter and the math on remaining miles felt manageable.

The last segment into Durango follows Junction Creek down out of the San Juans. The terrain eases, the trees get bigger, and eventually you walk into town still carrying everything you’ve carried for 26 days except for about 14 pounds of body mass. We finished in mid-September. The terminal sign is modest. You take the photo, drive to wherever is nearest, and eat until the situation resolves.

The Colorado Trail is a well-constructed route through genuinely excellent terrain. In a wet year, it is the same route, wetter, with more impressive weather. I’d do it again. I would bring more food, and I would go in knowing that August in the Colorado high country is monsoon season, which is not a problem so much as a condition.

I’ve concluded that I like hiking. The qualifier is that I like it most when it includes food at regular, predictable intervals. This turns out to be a preference shared by most mammals, and it’s one I intend to plan around more deliberately going forward.

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Full photo album — Colorado Trail, August–September 2022