Day 15: To Hopewell lakeish

Tl;Dr: work in progress. Mostly off cell service, next update probably Friday. Weather says: Rainy.

Might consider Vallecitos Mountian Ranch or a near by cabin if thing looks iffy. Update: Vallecitos Mountain Ranch is to busy hosting bhuddist retreats to offer water or shelter to travelers, but they assure me it’s beautiful. Huh.

You know what assumptions do right?

Assumption:reality

  • El Rito is tiny, no food or water: El Rito is charming, and the ranger station gave me water, coffee and power
  • New Mexico Roads are awful: Abiquiu to Cañon Plaza roads have been very nice. Even the forest roads are really easy.
  • Cañon Plaza has no services: the Summer Store is closed, but Sylvia let me hide out from the weather in their tractor garage & gave me water.
  • Thunderstorms mean hail & lightning: just thunder & light rain today.
  • On that last point: see below

Gonna get back out in it, looks like the cell is past me.

Update 10pm

Made it to Hopewell. Camped, water re-supplied thanks to Merlin, Katie & Yeshe – next door neighbors. But getting here…

After leaving Cañon Plaza I knew I had a lot of elevation to gain, and it started right away. Up through more very pretty meadows, with a handy dandy flowing creek on one side.

Around 5 I started the final climb up to 9.9k. Just after I left Point Of Interest ‘Cabin’ I could smell the petrichor and sure enough a little rain after that.

Then more, and more and more. With thunder, and lightning. for 2 solid hours as inched my way up to 9.9k. I can’t really describe it, the photos don’t even do justice. I wore 2 of 4 of my rain kit clothes, probably the right amount.

The lightning was scary. Never closer than 5 miles, but hard to predict how fast it was moving or what I would do. I tried to stay out of wide Open spaces, but that was not always possible. Regardless, I left.

What was even more scary were the seven cars I saw going to the local Buddhist retreat. This was a very rough road, but that seemed not to matter to the people driving the Corollas and Priuses. Priuses dan, what was essentially a stream at nearly 30 mph. One of them stopped to say “Hi!” and then left without another word. The rest seemed not very interested in me and perhaps a little perturbed that I was making it harder for them to get by. Hmph. I feel like I should write the spiritual leader of that place a letter. Which probably means I should not.

Camp Hopewell Lake is a standard car camping setup, loop, pit toilets, no running water. Slightly more expensive and the place I stayed last night that had a kitchen, running water and Wi-Fi. The other campers have been lovely, including Merlin, Katie, and Yeshe who loaded me back up with water.

Merlin, Katie & Yeshe – Trail Angles

Bad news is that quite a bit of my clothing is very, very wet. Supposedly it is going to rain again tonight so things won’t really have a chance to dry out. I strung up a laundry line with the things that are essential regardless since they can’t get any more wet. Wet clothes will be disgusting, but for the most part I don’t have to wear them. And I will need to find a place to store them that doesn’t make everything else wet.

I hear from the camp host Don but tomorrow will be muddy no matter what route I take. That means a lot of slow going. I’m not quite sure whether I should forge on a head, or wait for a day to dry out. Yeshe says Colorado is amazing.

Really pooped, g’nite


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

One response to “Day 15: To Hopewell lakeish”

  1. JEANNETTE Avatar
    JEANNETTE

    Dave, this is an incredibly impressive effort
    We are all pulling for you!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *