Hiking Together: Meetup: Day 52 – Wednesday 9/2/2020 – 2117.0 – clear, sunny, cool, no rain whatsoever. I am jointly camping with Justin. We woke at 5 am together. We were on trail at 5:50 am. We started with a series of medium (500’) climbs. They went by OK. We stopped every two hours for a snack. We met and chatted with a hunter on horseback. After the medium climbs we had a big one 1800’. We stopped at noon about 25% up the climb for lunch. Then it was back at it. We went up and up and up. I was getting tired. It ended in a double summit. On the second one there had been a small landslide and when we got there Justin said it looked like it had been repaired. Then around the corner, out of the wind, we stopped on the side of the mountain for my final snack. I was sitting on a downward sloped rock on a very downward sloped trail looking straight down a 45 degree slope. Suddenly I felt I was going to fall. Was it vertigo? Wow, that never happens to me. I finished my snack. Carefully I got up and continued hiking on the side of the mountain, but I was having a hard time shaking that “if I fell off trail I’d be a goner” feeling. That was very spooky. After all the thousands of miles to have that happen. But I gotta say that spot was particularly unnerving. After that episode, the rocky trail, the steep descent, and how tired I was I let Justin lead and I slowly descended. It was still a few miles to our campsite. When I got there I was beat. We got our tents up. We went and got water. This whole 80 miles section in the San Juan mountains and pushing to do 16.5 miles per day was too much. I think we should have slowed down and taken another day. So while we were hiking Justin made the executive decision to go to Pagosa Spring, get a hotel room and take a zero day on Friday. There we can get a shower, do laundry, and maybe eat pizza, or BBQ I think I need this break as a pick me up since the trail had been so hard recently.
