NOTES FROM THE TRAIL: HEALING IN CHAMA

Hiker post-holes up to his neck!

Hiker loses shoe in post-hole and hikes out in his Crocs!

Hikers glissade 100 feet down mountainside!

Hiker retreats south to Chama after ski bindings break!

All this snow excitement awaits when we return to the trail. Right now we are in a hotel room in Chama, waiting for John’s shin splints to calm down. (My gosh, if we can just be patient and run through the entire list of hiker injuries, we’ll be bullet-proof by mid-Colorado).

John’s shin splits began hurting two days out of Cuba, after a particularly challenging day (see previous blog post). We left the trail two days later, hitching a ride north to Chama. Monday morning we’ll hitch a ride back to highway 84, hiking the 88 miles to return to Chama.

There is a bottleneck of hikers in town. Some are waiting for snow to melt before they continue north; others are planning to flip north to Wyoming, flopping back to Colorado later in the year.

And this is a below average snow year.

So we’re having fun painting postcards for our granddaughter, watching Andy Griffith and The Office reruns. Taking hot baths and reading. Eating Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs with cold milk. All the usual zero day stuff. Funny how our thruhike-endurance-challenge keeps getting interrupted by these mini-vacations.

Will we reach Canada? Stay tuned.