San Juan Mountains, Continental Divide

I spent my final night in New Mexico in Chama, a small town popular with hikers preparing to take on the CDT’s Colorado section. Colorado is often said to be one of the most challenging stages of the hike. I'll walk about 740 mi (1190 km), ascending peaks exceeding 10,000 ft (3048 m), through forests and alpine tundra. Colorado is where the Rocky Mountains begin on the Continental Divide Trail, and I will follow this range, on and off, until I arrive at the hike’s northern terminus at the Canadian border.

You can feel the change quickly when leaving New Mexico. Colorado immediately asserts itself, promising that from here on in, things will be different. As I hiked up the difficult hillsides of the San Juan Mountains, the air changed. Gone was the dry heat of the desert. Now, the air was clearer, cooler and pine-scented. The rock canyons and red desert mesas became forested mountain slopes, and instead of road runners and turkey vultures, songbirds twittered, and golden eagles climbed the skies. I missed the long, flat stretches of New Mexico as I struggled up the inclines of Cumbres Pass, but the views from the top, the deep glacial cut valleys cloaked with the dark green of the pines, made me excited about having a new frontier to conquer. 

Some days later, I reached the Rio Grande National Forest. Named after the ‘Big River’, this beautiful stretch of protected woodland covers about 1.8 million acres (7284 km²) and is famous for being the headwater of the Rio Grande River, which forms a big chunk of the U.S.’s border with Mexico. The mountains here are known for their soaring peaks, with La Garita caldera, the remnants of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth’s history, standing out among them.

The first thing I noticed in these woods was the gorgeous aspens. At this time of the year, their huge banks of foliage are a brilliant, shimmering green. But it’s their autumn leaves that are most impressive, when they turn a soft golden-yellow, creating a wonderful effect in the valleys when viewed from the top of a Colorado mountain. I sat here for a while and boiled some water for a cup of instant coffee. I cupped the mug in my hands and blew the steam billowing from the top, thinking how cold it had got in these higher altitudes. I took a sip of coffee, it was strong, bitter and a little sour, but I felt invigorated and ready for my hike to Monarch Pass.