August 24th
Segment 14
The day started at 0441 in the morning with waking me up saying there’s people walking around out there! We opened our tents and could see head lamps bobbing around. We called out “Are you ok? Do you need help?” No answer. We were already sleeping with heightened awareness of possible cow activity. Shortly there was another couple of people walking by on the other side of us with headlamps. We decided we weren’t going back to sleep with all of the activity so we started to get ready for the day. As we were hiking down the trail a few more hikers passed us the a group of 3 older men. “Where are you going?” we asked. They said they were going to climb a peak and watch the sun rise. Oh wow! We’re used to being the only ones up so early and passing the tents of sleeping hikers or those just getting ready for the day. It was quite the busy morning before sunrise.
Discretion advised! Violence and hostility!:
We had hiked about 2 and half miles and we were about to settle down for breakfast at a creek when Jodie noticed in the FAROUT app (an interactive trail guide with comments from hikers about water and camping, etc) from a comment that about a half mile ahead the Angel of Shavano USFS campground had picnic tables, pit toilets, a dumpster and potable water. WOW! We hiked into a nearly empty campground and found a table near the bathroom. What luxury! I asked a camper leaving where the water was, and he happily told me about the old fashioned water pump. He said you have to pump it about 30 times and then you’ll get fresh clean water. That was a fun and new experience. The water tasted great and no filtering was a treat!
We went back to the picnic table and sat down to make breakfast. My breakfast was cooked and I was just about to start eating when a man came walking toward us. He sounded angry and he started the conversation saying “Are you guys freeloaders? This is a fee area not a free area!” He sounded so angry that I grabbed my phone and took a picture of him. I said “Hi, are you the camp host?” He said yeah. I asked him what his name was and said “I’m not telling you my name!” He started telling us to leave in an angry and aggressive manner. I was still seated and I looked at him and looked at my hot breakfast. I said “No, sir, I am backpacking and just cooked my hot breakfast and I can’t fit it back into my backpack, I will finish my breakfast and leave. We came from the Colorado trail in the woods and there isn’t a sign about the fee area” At that time he grabbed my trekking pole resting at the end of the picnic and thrust it at my face point first with a stabbing motion a couple of times yelling at me to leave, then he stepped back and dropped my pole on the ground. I grabbed my phone and started taking more pictures of him. He came at me with his hat and slapped me with it. At this time Jodie got up videoing with her phone and came around the table to defend me and pointed at him and said to “back the F off”, he grabbed her hand and thrust it away from him. I can hear myself in the background still trying to reason with him saying “Money is not the issue, please call the cops.” He walked away saying “You better get the F out of here!” and walked away. We looked at each other, both of us shaking. I said well, I’m going to try to eat this breakfast and then we’ll leave. About 5 minutes later he came back with a large canister of bear spray saying “I wonder if this works as well on women as it does on bears?” Jodie started calling 911, the call kept dropping. I think all she got through was “We’re at the Angel of Shavano campground and we’re being assaulted by the camp host.” I started recording him. He’s saying “you’re freeloaders!” I said “you’re threatening me with pepper spray now?, you’re gonna threaten me with bear spray? He keeps repeating “you’re freeloaders!” I said “we’re calling the Sheriffs Dept.” He said “maybe they can get you to pay if they show up.” I said “Yeah, maybe there’s day use fee and I’d be happy to pay it, but there wasn’t a sign.” At this point he actually sprayed the bear spray in our direction. I said “you just sprayed pepper spray at me, I’ve got that on video, that’s assault. We’re calling law enforcement” Jodie was continuing to try to call law enforcement. We packed up and got out of there. We stopped a little ways up the trail on the other side of a creek. Jodie still had her breakfast and we stopped to decompress a little from the incident, both of us deeply shaken. We had put our packs back on and were walking up the trail when law enforcement showed up looking for us. We were so grateful to see them! We told our story and I said I definitely want to press charges. The officer said he had the discretion to take him in cuffs for processing. I said I was more concerned with him having criminal charges and losing his job vs a demonstration of winning.
We saw Barns slack packing (no backpack) with her friend Kim. We told them what happened at the campground. Barns said she had actually camped at the campground last night and the camp host woke her up and asked her to pay for her spot. She had told him she didn’t have any cash and offered to Venmo him and offer her phone number so she could pay later, I guess he stormed off and then came to find us.
A few hours later we reached a ridge as we approached highway 50. We turned on our phones hoping for service so we could reach out to our families. Jodie called her husband. She called out to me, shaking. Come here! I’m putting the phone on speaker, he said he has bad news! I could hear Aiden saying “Honey, I’m so sorry, Bosco died today.” Bosco is Jodie’s lead goat for High Sierra Packgoats, her mountaineering guide business. Bosco was Jodie’s first goat and he had been fighting off a bear almost nightly for 2 weeks protecting the rest of the heard and was suffering a severe infection that he was on antibiotics for. Nevada Dept of Wildlife said the bear wasn’t enough of a nuisance for them to intervene yet, even after multiple calls and reports. Jodie was devastated, and felt so hopeless so far from home. Our already darkened day felt darker.
We walked on and I took a picture looking west towards home on highway 50, our halfway point, 250 miles. Today was a big mile marker, but there wasn’t a celebration.
We began the steep decent down to the highway 50 trailhead. Trail Angel Kim appeared before us on the trail. We had met her earlier that day after leaving Angel of Shavano, she was helping Barns slack pack over the mountain and had told us she could give us a ride into Salida. We told her not to wait because we were so slow. Not only had she waited, she came to find us. We told her about Bosco. She gave Jodie the longest loving hug and took us to Salida.
Looking west towards home
We arrived at the Salida hostel around 1 unable to reach anyone by phone. No one would be there until 4pm to check us in or give us our resupply box. A traveler from Europe cycle touring let us in and showed us around. We felt we were being held hostage by our resupply box and the hostel. We decide to shower and do a load of laundry while we waited. If just paying for services was a problem we would just pay the overnight fee and stay instead of returning to the trail. We ended up staying. I made follow up phone calls to the Salida USFS and the Colorado Trail Foundation re the mornings incident, and sent photos and videos to the Sheriff Officer.
The day had a nice ending. We had a wonderful dinner with Stinger, whom we spent a couple of days hiking with, and her wife Jenn. It was a beautiful end to a difficult day. We really enjoyed the company, the laughter and the yummy food!
Another big highlight of the day is the first half of the Colorado Trail book went into the hiker box! We are done with that whole book!!!
