The Colorado Trail Part II: Botany and Apothecary on the CT

The Colorado Trail: View North of Cottonwood Pass - July, 2025

On the way up Tin Cup Pass

​If you missed it: The Colorado Trail Part I: Fear and Flora on the CT


It is Day Three. We’ll be above treeline all day, and we plan to do only 11 miles, a nice change from the 15 of the last two days. My fears have eased with sleep, and I feel ready for the day as we head down the trail shortly after 7:00. Somehow, though I think my efficiency is improving, breaking camp takes a good 90 minutes. Deflating, rolling, stuffing, and repacking all take time. I also notice that my ziplock bag of the dreaded cold oatmeal goes down more slowly each morning. 

We’re up and over the first pass fairly quickly, and then we descend to a highway - Cottonwood Pass. We start up the next climb and encounter some day hikers. It is weird to see the highway - we’re not so much in the middle of nowhere as I thought. It is also weird to see people who are not through- or section-hikers. One woman we pass is dressed for mall-shopping, and her perfume smells strange and unnatural. The smells of the trail are the norm right now. I’m glad when we’ve made it past the “crowd” and can settle into our peaceful and un-populated trek once again.

The small streams flowing through deep green mosses and multi-colored wildflowers today are exceptional. Charlotte knows the names of most. She examines them, takes photos, and in the evening studies her small wildflower identification book and makes sketches in her journal. Her knowledge of flora earned her the trail name Botany when she did a segment of the CT last year. She joined a group of friends who completed the entire CT for their last 75-mile section from Molas Pass (near Silverton) to Durango. A trail name is not a name you give yourself - it is a name given to you by those you know or even meet and hike with on the trail, and it evokes an essential quality or characteristic about you. A person hiking with Charlotte’s group last year was dubbed Waterfall after he fell down a waterfall (he was not hurt). And Hummingbird is the trail moniker of a solo hiker we met because she subsists on lots of sweet snacks while she’s on-trail. 

I do not yet have a trail name. At this point in our journey, I am sticky and dusty and stinky. I’ve sweat-soaked my quick-dry hiking pants and sun hoodie multiple times. I have layers of lavender essential oil on my feet and underarms, arnica and bandages on my bruised hips, bacitracin and bandaids around my blistered toes. I’ve gone through a ton of hand sanitizer and do my best to clean the sunstick off my face at night. I nurse my lips through their dryness with Aquaphor. Taking in my full array of remedies, Charlotte knights me Apothecary, and thus, I am now trail-named. 

We pull into camp in the early afternoon. We’re just a few feet below treeline so coverage is sparse. A sizeable marmot sunning on a rock nearby settles in to supervise. Occasionally munching on some roots, the marmot is our camp mascot, watching over us through the afternoon. Charlotte says that marmots control the weather, so we hope this one is happy with us.

We hang out at the creek, dipping our feet in the ice cold water, which feels like a million bucks. It is nice to relax inside the tent while an afternoon storm blows through, and Charlotte reads aloud from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. We hit the hay before 9pm, with the alarm set for 5:15.

Day Four. We’re on-trail before 7:00. Charlotte is continuing to carry the greater percentage of weight, and our meal consumption has reduced the load as well. We immediately start the climb to the first pass of the day, which summits at just under 13,000 feet. I don’t feel great. I’m slightly nauseous due to fatigue, and my body is not moving well or quickly, despite the lighter pack and extra rest yesterday. I understand that each one of these days has been extremely demanding - put them all together and well, I don’t exactly feel a spring in my step. I inform Charlotte partway up the pass that I refuse to have cold oatmeal the next day, which is to be our last. I will have a tuna packet instead - anything but that oatmeal. I can’t think about it too much as it makes the nausea worse.

So I look around me. We are climbing the southeastern end of a long valley, the northwestern end of which we descended yesterday. Though the valley behind us is lush, the current terrain is stark in its beauty. Dark rock is strewn across green tundra, reminding me of the Scottish Highlands  - minus the castles and lochs. It is so quiet, almost haunting.

The descent includes a lot of areas of broken rock fragments, or talus fields. Talus isn’t bad for a change-up, but navigating it is challenging. Charlotte, despite her heavier load, is way up ahead with her poles in one hand making it look like a hop, skip and jump. Then there’s me. Reminiscent of Quasimodo with my pack giving me a hunched back, and my slightly uneven gait, over-relying on my poles to help balance, tap-tap-tapping across the talus. Until a pole gets stuck, I almost fall over, pull it out, right myself, and move on. This only happens a dozen times or so.

We’re almost at the top of the next pass when I hear Charlotte talking. She’s conversing with a grouse that has startled just as she passed by. They never seem to figure out they should run off before the danger is upon them. The silly thing is running around as if it has no idea where it is or how it got here. At almost 13,000 feet I wonder the same thing. On top of this pass we encounter two men with plaid shirts, white beards, and well-used old-school gear who assure me that they are slower than me. Then we meet a woman kitted out in a long hiking skirt, a sun hoodie and stylish hat, and colorful Dirty Girl gaiters over her trail shoes. She is clearly a trail veteran. We visit for a bit, and learn that she spends nine months out of every year on-trail. She’s been doing that since retirement, 11 years ago. And, as it turns out, she is parked right next to Charlotte’s car at the trail head where we’re finishing. Small, and very cool, world.

After descending through shady and fragrant wooded terrain, with giant blooms of columbine and four-foot tall larkspur, we come to Tin Cup Pass, the last serious climb of our journey. As we start up it is only 11:30 but ominous rumblings emanate from the dark clouds hanging in the direction we’re heading. I tell Charlotte how sorry I am, that it is my fault we might be in harm’s way, because I am so slow. Charlotte looks at me and says, “focusing on how slow you are isn’t very useful.” She is so right. So I stop apologizing, reset my head, and enjoy this last climb up through the alpine tundra. The paintbrush at this altitude morphs from orange-reddish to fuchsia pink or pale waxy yellow. So many colors grow up through the deep green I have to keep reminding myself to move forward. I try to capture all that I see with my phone, but the pictures don’t come close to doing it justice. And I am thankful. Thankful that I am healthy, that I have the time and the wherewithal to be here, and that I am doing this with the person I so love to spend my time with - the amazing Charlotte.

The clouds move north of us and we make it over the high point without mishap. Right after lunch, though, the rain sets in for good. It is a steady, soaking, lovely rain. We’re walking on an old railroad bed so the descent is mild and smooth, even though it’s morphed into a creek with all the rain. Ethereal wisps of cloud hang in the air above the deep valley we’re skirting. The scent of the trail and the trees is pungent and earthy with the moisture, and the plants seem to be coming alive - bright green and plumped up. All is silent but the sound of the raindrops touching down.

The camp spots we’d planned on were so close to the trail, and so full of puddles, with steep slopes above and below - not good candidates. Also, I was now fantasizing about pit toilets. Sad, but true - I was not sure my legs would be able to squat anymore. We decided to push on to the finish, so Navigator Charlotte overlapped a couple of downloaded maps to find our way. And she did it! 

It was surreal to see the car, to be finished a day early - and to realize that we had completed our 60-mile journey with approximately 16,000 feet of climbing. Taking the pack off my back and sitting in the car seat felt pretty amazing. But it was also kind of hard to absorb that we were really done. All the planning, training (at least for me), prepping, the challenge of the actual trail - and now we were driving down the gnarly rocky road in the rain, heading to Salida. And some gluten-free pizza.

*****
I learned so much:

• Frequent fluid and snacks are critical
• Cold oatmeal is not an acceptable breakfast item
• It’s okay to respect the pace my body is willing to go
• The true experience is about tuning in with all senses, rather than a tunnel vision on the destination
• Appreciation for my body’s fortitude - I could have gotten altitude sickness or my body could have given up the ghost but it hung in there the whole way
• A kind or insightful remark can make someone’s day
• Although I usually spend my time in nature solo, this journey would simply not have been as rich, as fun, or as meaningful if Charlotte were not there. 

I also had a shift in perspective regarding focused efforts. Throughout our time on-trail, I found myself thinking “Ironman wasn’t so bad - one hard day and then I got to rest.” These four extremely demanding days in a row made me hungry for a one-day challenge. 

It has taken awhile to recover from our CT experience. I looked like Frankenstein on my walks and runs, lurching along with stiff concrete legs. But, about ten days after getting off-trail, with my Frankie-gait mostly resolved, I set a new goal. The Run Through Time trail half marathon this past March with Charlotte was the first trail running race I’d ever done, and the first distance I’d done in years. I was planning to run that again next year and focus on improving my time. But our days on the CT showed me that I could challenge my fears and raise the bar. And so, I am now training for the Run Through Time full marathon trail run in March of ‘26. The course has close to 4000 feet of climbing, so it will truly be a challenge. But I won’t have a 35-pound pack on my back. My new mantra is: I can do anything for one day. And the next day, I can rest.

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Cottonwood Pass

Wildflowers on the CT

We did it??

We did it!!