DAY 7 STATS: 16 miles; +3,889/-3,311 feet
I woke early on our zero day, eager to spend as much of it as I could eating and exploring Breckenridge. I’ve never been one to sit idle on a trip, whether it’s backpacking centric or not. I was especially looking forward to a hearty breakfast involving pancakes, as was Chris.
With local hot coffee in hand, provided by the hostel for guests, I took a seat in the hostel’s living room with Chris where we were greeted by several other hikers staying there, including Tambo and Polar Bear. The weather was looking lousy, and the small group of hikers who were contemplating leaving that morning to continue on decided to stay put one more day.
One of the other hostel guests, Wildflower, walked in with an enormous box of doughnuts for everyone to share. I’d met him briefly the evening prior when I asked if anyone knew where “Wildflower” (the name of my room in the hostel) was located. “He’s right here!” he exclaimed jovially.
As I talked with Wildflower that morning, I learned he was a Marine veteran. He wasn’t reluctant to share that he’d suffered severe trauma during his time of service. I can’t even fathom what he witnessed and had to do, but I’ve read and heard enough about others’ experiences to guess. My mind has a hard time processing war and why military force must exist at all. People like Wildflower are one of the reasons why.
Thankfully, unlike so many tragic stories I hear about veterans suffering from PTSD, Wildflower was addressing his mental health in a variety of healthier, albeit unconventional ways. He carries a 7-pound altar with him into the woods, along with a collection of herbal teas, books, a journal, and other healing modalities he deems necessary to get by. He’d successfully hiked the Long Trail earlier in the year with God knows how many pounds on his back (I remember “eighty” being thrown around in conversations with him). Despite what he’s lived through, he still lives to serve others. Incredible guy.
The day flew by, but I loved every second of it, starting with breakfast, which we ate with several of the other thru hikers staying at the hostel. The post office didn’t have our packages, unsurprisingly, but we had some leftover food since we’d gotten to Breckenridge a day early. It was easy to get the rest of what we needed from the grocery store beside the post office, and I’d soon have my first experience eating a ramen bomb (ramen, instant mashed potatoes with some kind of meat, like tuna, to round out the nutrition with a little protein). It was also my first experience resupplying on the fly. Little Ms. Type A likes to plan ahead and know what’s coming. But admittedly, it was fun to think outside the box and make it work with what was available. Finding a Entenmann’s fruit pie made it all worthwhile.
Chris was a seasoned pro at resupply on the fly, but he waited patiently while I made my choices, even adding a large bag of gummy bears for Wildflower to his basket, after hearing he loved them on trail.
Later that afternoon, Chris helped me transfer fuel from a canister in the hiker box into the one I’d be carrying since the start. Before we left for the trip, Chris purchased a small, lightweight device, similar to this one I own, to “marry” fuel from one canister to the next. It’s a great invention as it helps keep more canisters out of landfills and more money in hiker’s pockets.
Quite the crowd gathered around the kitchen table as I pulled my canister out of the freezer so Chris could connect it with the valve to the one I’d retrieved from the hiker box (you need a temperature gradient between the canisters).
The tension in the room was palpable–was Chris about to blow up the place or would it actually work? Will, a.k.a Sparkles, sat beside Chris shielding himself with the doughnut box. It was the only defense he had since his chair was pinned in by the wall beside where Chris sat.
Chris connected the canisters and opened the transfer valve slowly. Everyone leaned in to hear the faint hisssss, and then everyone jumped out of their skin when Chris yelled “AAAHHHH!”
Laughter filled the house as soon as everyone realized they’d been had! The fuel transfer was successful and the Fireside Inn is still intact. 🙂
That night, the crew invited us to dinner at a local sports bar, Downstairs at Eric’s. Chris and I sat with Tambo and Polar Bear, learning more about their young lives as we noshed on fried pickles Chris ordered for the table. Polar Bear is a chemical engineer and Tambo had just graduated from college, double majoring in economics and math. Sharp kids with bright futures.
After dinner, Chris challenged me to a game a of Ms. Pac-Man, my favorite video game of all time. Despite having played it for decades, I’d never paid a bit of attention to my score. My only goal is to get to the intermission when cute little baby Pac-Man is born. Chris, far more savvy than me with games (at least at Pac-Man….you’ll see), knew to gobble up as many of the ghosts as he could to tilt the score far in his favor.
When we returned to the hostel, Alex, one of a pair of brothers thru hiking the trail, greeted us at the door excitedly. “Do you guy want a play a game with us?! It’s gonna be so fun!” I mean, how can you say no? So of course we said yes. And the two Gen Xers of this crowd of nearly a dozen hikers (the rest either Millinneals or Gen Z) had a ball learning the ins and outs of “Mafia,” which wasn’t so new to most of them.
It would be expected to say I felt old in this crowd of hikers who were all nearly young enough to be my kids; however, I can’t remember a time I felt more youthful. On trail and off, age differences tend to fade to the background. And it’s a beautiful thing.
After a few games of Mafia, we all turned in. We had an early wake up call to slack pack (hike with day packs rather than fully loaded backpacks) from Copper Mountain back to Breckenridge, a pro tip I’d learned from previous CT thru hikers and one that many hostel of the other guests were taking advantage of as well.
Day 7
We woke in time to catch the first free bus back to the stop where we’d ridden into Breckenridge which left at 6:31 a.m. We didn’t want to miss it and risk getting caught on the high, exposed ridge of the Tenmile Range when expected thunderstorms moved in later that day. It also didn’t take much to convince us to slack pack it when we looked closer at the elevation gain and loss of the 16 miles we’d hike–nearly 4,000 feet of climbing, followed by over 3,300 feet of descending.
The climb started gently enough, and our group naturally spread out over the course of the first couple of miles. Chris and I, the old farts of the group, stayed in the lead. Sometimes I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, since it often means we’re grinding out big miles at the expense of sit-down breaks. But on this particular day, watching the clouds stay firmly planted over where were hiking, I was happy to keep forging ahead.
As we gained in elevation, eventually cresting the ridge between peaks 5 and 6 at 12,491 feet, our pace slowed significantly. My legs felt like lead, and we both found ourselves stopping to catch our breath more frequently.
“This probably isn’t the best time to remind you, but I have that weird heart condition which could cause me to have issues at higher elevation,” I told Chris during one of our breaks when I could actually hear the murmur in my heart as it pounded in my chest. “I feel fine, but you should probably remember that in case I kick the bucket. They could skip over an autopsy and save Larry a few bucks,” I said semi-jokingly.
We’d talked about my pesky heart defect (patent foramen ovale, if you’re curious) on a hike before our Smokies FKT, shortly after it was discovered in 2019. If it caused any issues at all, it would be high-elevation sickness symptoms. Apparently, I’m more likely than the average person to have them, despite never having had them. Even so, I found myself increasingly anxious about it as we climbed higher, worried I might miss the early signs that could progress to scarier things like HAPE and HACE.
We reached the ridge successfully and traversed it before descending down the other side. I figured if I wasn’t having issues by then, I was probably gonna live to tell the tale of our hike. The only thing that still made me anxious were the dark clouds beginning to surround us.
As we started our descent, my phone rang. It was Paige, my daughter, and it was the first time I’d spoken to her since I left home. We’d texted, but I loved hearing her voice and catching up. It passed the time, but the last few miles, climbing up and around a hillside next to the resort’s property, felt like they took forever.
Finally, we left the quiet of the trail and walked into the heart of Copper Mountain Village. We were both hungry, but nothing struck our fancy in the resort’s overpriced restaurants, so we found the bus stop for our return trip back to Breckenridge and waited. Tambo and Polar Bear filed in shortly after we arrived.
We picked up a very late lunch at Subway once we got back to Breckenridge, tacking on an extra sub to our order for the next day’s lunch. The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling out at the hostel, followed by a quick run to the boojie convenience store nearby to grab some easy food for dinner to share.
Chris bought some cheesy jalapeno popper things, and I bought a ridiculously expensive frozen pizza, imported from Naples, Italy, apparently. The jalapeno poppers won by a long shot, especially since the hostel only had a microwave/convection “oven” to cook it in. The laughs we had trying to figure out how to use the oven and then eating the soggy, semi-cooked pizza were almost worth the cost of the pizza.
The hostel was quiet since the majority of the people made a last-minute decision to continue on after reaching Copper Mountain. I couldn’t figure out how they did that though, since they appeared to only have day packs that morning. I’d figure out how the next day.
Colorado Trail Planning Tips
Slackpacking the miles between Breckenridge and Copper Mountain was worth it for another night in town! The bus ride isn’t short, so that’s why we opted to leave it for the end of the hike, to avoid afternoon thunderstorms as much as possible.