by Dean “Boomer” Krakel
“When you get dropped off at the Mexican border, all your expectations and preconceptions about what the Continental Divide Trail is or will be are shattered. That’s why all the thru-hikers tell each other, ‘you’re never gonna make it.’”
Those were the words of CDTC Executive Director Teresa Martinez to Morgan “Storm” Dzak and I during a meeting about our coalition ambassadorship.
Seventy-one days later, as Morgan and I make our way through Colorado, Teresa’s words ring true. Nothing about the CDT has been anything like what I expected.
New Mexico was harder, longer, drier and hotter than I ever thought it could be. Sometimes I took my sunglasses off because, and I swear this is true, I felt like my eyeballs were baking behind the lenses. New Mexico wasn’t flat. How many times had someone said that? And somehow I missed the part about the romance of walking roads. Lots and all kinds of roads. It’s so very humblIng to crest the top of a hill and see the road you’re walking stretching straight away to the horizon.
As we began our New Mexico hike, Morgan asked me what I thought I’d get from the experience. Oh, I said, I think New Mexico will be a spiritual journey. I guess you could say our walk was of a spiritual nature – in the way that spirit is tested. Walking with blisters through a prickly, rocky, heat-blasted moonscape of a desert packing water between scummy cow tanks and troughs will make your mind go through some serious spiritual gyrations. I have never wanted to quit something as much as I wanted to quit the trail in New Mexico. Some days I vowed to quit a half-dozen times or more.
What kept me going was the unexpected beauty of New Mexico. The technicolor sunsets and sunrises, star spangled night skies, the wildness of its vastness, friendliness of its people and the loosely formed community of CDT hikers we met along the way. And of course the optimism, enthusiasm and energy of my hiking partner, Morgan.
When we hit the Gila River canyons, however, Morgan went into a slump. A person of high country big vistas, she found the Gila claustrophobic and brooding. She hated being wet. No avoiding that when you cross and recross the Gila river dozens of times a day. Both of us shed tears of happiness when we crossed the New Mexico border and walked into Colorado. All those emotions, high to low, were totally unexpected.
All of our planning for the CDT was based on the thought of a linear journey. We’d start at the border and just walk to Canada. With some resupply days incorporated, of course. Those expectations have also been vaporized. Somewhere north of Mt. Taylor, we had a crisis of purpose. Morgan and I spent all morning in camp talking about what we hoped to accomplish with our CDT journey, those things we really wanted to experience. The places we wanted to see: Ghost Ranch, the Wind River Mountains, Yellowstone National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Glacier National Park. We wanted to walk the Divide through our home state of Colorado, beginning with the northern San Juan Mountains where we’d left off last year. Bikepacking Wyoming’s Great Basin was also among our plans.
Most of all, being journalists, we wanted to document the Continental Divide, our journey, the journey of others and the people and places along the way in words and photographs. To accomplish that, we realized, necessitated moving much slower than a thru-hiker’s pace. We were not going to be able do what we wanted to do and also walk every mile of the trail to Canada. So by necessity we have become hikers of the CDT, though not necessarily thru-hikers. An unexpected metamorphosis in our journey.
Recently, our Colorado plans were altered by wildfires, and the closure of National Forests around them. We had to abandon the San Juans and begin our journey north in the Collegiate Range. One more unexpected change.
So yes, ever since we started at the Mexican border, our thoughts about what our CDT journey is and should be have been challenged and changed by the reality of the trail. Every day brings new thoughts. New emotions. New learning. We have grown to accept our ever changing journey with joy, not fear or regret. We embrace the fluidity of our walk and resist defining it by the preconceptions and expectations we had so long ago – when Teresa Martinez told us exactly how it would go.
Dean “Boomer” Krakel is a 2018 CDTC Trail Ambassador, currently hiking the CDT with Morgan “Storm” Dzak. Dean has been a freelance photographer, photojournalist and photo editor for the past four decades. Follow Dean and Morgan’s journey on Instagram @greatdividehikers.
