Fundraising Overview
We are over $9 per mile in pledges -- closing in on twice our original goal! We have received donations and pledges from many people we have never met -- we are honored by the breadth of support the hike has generated. Thank you to all for your help.

Hike Vitals
Miles hiked to date: 900
Days since start: 37
Current location: Lake City, Colorado
Miles to go: 2100
Showers: 4

Hike Recap
Whoever is in charge of scheduling the world's climatic activities must have read our musings on the scarcity of water in our last post: we have had seen rain and/or snow every day for the past 31 days (and counting!).

In May, New Mexico had 300% of normal rainfall, turning the usually dry desert clay into a slippery sludge. The added toil was sometimes annoying, but otherwise of little consequence.

On May 18th we passed into Colorado where we were immediately greeted by the towering San Juan Mountains. The San Juans are among the most remote and rugged terrain in the continental United States, and they are infamous for guarding their winter snowfalls late into the summer; by noon on our first day the trail had disappeared beneath 3 to 6 feet of old snow. The challenge was just beginning.

Snow doesn't always spell trouble: miles can come with relative ease when it is hard enough to walk on. But the snow we encountered was unpredictable: sometimes we scooted along, but often we found ourselves plunging waist deep. It was exhausting, and it slowed our progress considerably.

Lisa (Jesse's fiance) delivered snow shoes in Pagosa Springs, but the San Juan's countered with a late May blizzard: 30 inches of snow fell on us in the course of two days. With very low visibility, our pace slowed to less than 1 mile per hour. Our running shoes held up to the snow surprisingly well; we ate our breakfasts and lunches while we walked to keep from getting too cold. Our tarp kept us dry in the nights we were forced to camp on the snow. By far the worst moments were trying to urge on our frozen shoes each morning -- we had to hammer on them with our snow shoes until they had softened up enough to slip in our feet.

Though we were hiking 14 hours a day, we were not able to make our expected mileages and our plans morphed frequently. We eventually arrived at Plan D, which traded in the Continental Divide on our last two days for the more hospitable terrain of lower elevations and made it possible to meet Gail (Jim's mom) for some planned R & R in nearby Lake City.

The highlights of our past three weeks:

• Friends joining our hike - Randy Hulett joined us in Northern New Mexico and Jon Zalisk jumped on for some of the trek through the snow of the San Juan's (Jon may not talk to us again).
  
• More Trail Angels - Don Roach (Jesse's dad) provided bar-b-qued chicken and many other provisions in Northern New Mexico, and Kathy and Anthony Skaff more than saved our bacon in the San Juans. Lisa continued here constant support by picking us up on Wolf Creek Pass for a night in Pagosa Springs, Colorado and renting us snowshoed. Read more about these saviors on our Trail Angels page.
  
• Wildlife - Besides a wolf in northern New Mexico, and hundreds of elk everywhere, the little kids are out in force! We spotted a mother bear and her two two cubs mistook us for mom when the mother bear ran off. When the cubs realized their mistake they booked up some nearby trees. And yesterday, we stumbled onto a moose and her calf.