This microbox was planted on our 2002 Rocky Mountain trip to do volunteer trail work along the Continental Divide in Colorado and New Mexico. Having a bit of free time for hiking and exploring between CDT trail work projects, we were surprised to find that there were only a handful of letterboxes, placed mostly by out of state visitors, in the entire state of Colorado back then, and none at all in the Durango area, the nearest one probably being the "Adopted Country" placed by Jay Drew north of Pagosa Springs a year or so earlier.

So, in order to get things going in the southwestern corner of Colorado, rather than planting a box on a longer hike of the type we usually do, say along the Colorado Trail or up any of the many nearby mountains, we opted for a very short walk from the "Best Hikes with Children in Colorado" book which we had just bought as an alternative to the "100 Hikes" series that we mostly used in our travels. We thought that this walk was really far too short for a letterbox hunt, being less than the generally accepted norm of about a mile for a box, but we felt that the drive up into the mountains and the box planted about halfway around the short loop made for a nice little stand-alone adventure, and might perhaps encourage other folks later on to come explore other longer trails in the area on which to begin planting their own boxes and sharing their own adventures.

At any rate, to find this particular sweet little spot, take Durango's Main St. (Route 550) north until you turn west on 25th Street, which later becomes Junction St, Junction Creek Rd and finally FR 171. Follow this paved road 3.5 miles, bearing left at 3 miles to pass the end of the Colorado Trail, and then drive just over 7 miles of good gravel road to the Animas Overlook parking area on your right. Take the paved, wholly accessible 2/3mile loop trail for great views of the San Juans and the Animas River Valley. About halfway through the loop, turn your back to the Basketmakers of Falls Creek sign, and go a couple of paces to the end of the railroad tie past the bench. The microbox with its lovely little mountain scene stamp by RTRW is tucked under the tie behind the smaller of two reddish rocks. Please take care to close the lid tightly and enjoy this beautiful area!

This box was reported missing on July 4, 2009, but - hey - it had a nice long run as the original box planted in this area and on such a short sweet trail that we were really rather amused to find out that in recent years it has spawned quite a flurry of "copy-cat" boxes!!!

For many years now, seeing the Continental Divide Trail become a reality has been one of my "pet projects". After 5 "thru-hikes" on the 2,150-mile Appalachian Trail, 3 "thru-hikes" on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, and dozens of treks on many "shorter" long-distance trails, certainly hiking the CDT, the so-called "King of Trails", 3,150-miles from Mexico to Canada was by far my own most exciting and memorable backpacking adventure of all!

Of course, back when I backpacked the CDT, and even through to recent times, part of what made this Rocky Mountain trek from Mexico to Canada so much more arduous and challenging than the other trails was that so much of it had no trail! Long distances with no established pathway often required "creative route-finding" or dangerous bushwhacking, so it later became my dream to help join CDTA in making one long completely built and well-established trail for future hikers to more safely and easily enjoy this fantastic journey!

Well, after many work trips in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana over the past dozen or so years, the job is still far from complete. In late summer 2009 we had hoped to continue work on a new connector to link up some sections in central Colorado that we had worked on previously. Back when I first hiked through here in 1989, I had taken a route over the rugged Ten-Mile and Gore Ranges, then cut over to Ptarmigan and Vasquez Peak, but now the CDT is being re-routed to stay somewhat closer to the actual divide, to go from Glacier Peak east of Breckenridge over to 14,000 foot Gray's Peak right on the divide, down to Herman Gulch and then back up to Vasquez Peak and Berthoud Pass more directly.

Anyway, on our way back to Denver at the end of that Glacier Peak work trip in 2009, we had decided to check out the kiosk that we heard had been built at a major new trailhead between our last two Colorado work trips (Mt. Morgan and Mt. Flora). We had a letterbox with us containing a stamp by RTRW of CT that we had hoped to plant at Grand Lake, but we weren't going to have enough time left to get up that way on that trip, so we thought we'd leave it near the new trailhead, and maybe get back the following year to move it to a more appropriate spot.

Well, while I was searching around for a place to leave the letterbox, Pete seemed to be transfixed by the maps, photos and captions over by the kiosk. He was staring at the left side of the signboard, and finally called out, "Wanda, come over here! This actually looks like a picture from our Mt. Flora work trip a few years back, and this looks like -" he hesitated...

I dashed back to where he was standing and started jumping up and down shouting, "That's me, that's me, that's me!!!" Sure enough, a stranger would never have been able to recognize me, what with the big yellow hard hat covering my face, since I was slightly bent over digging my yellow-strapped pulaski into the ground to build the trail. However, the clothing was unmistakable! The same gray zip-turtleneck I wore for years on the CDT, the same gray socks, the same black pants, the same red bandana and the same red Hi-Tec boots, of which I wore out so many pairs during my long backpacking years, but had just dug one out of the garage recently to use as the place in which to put my stuffed rooster mascot for my "Miala Baba Koguta" stamp! Wow - now what kind of a coincidence was that!?!

Needless to say, I was tickled pink to find out that I was the new "CDT poster gal", especially since the caption above couldn't have been better suited to my love of trails and volunteerism in general. It read, "Continue the vision. Become a part of the project." What a terrific feeling to know that I was indeed a small part of this grand CDT project, that I had given back at least a little to these wonderful trails that have meant so much to me, and might perhaps even encourage others to do so, too!

At any rate, the original stamp by RTRW that we left near that kiosk back in 2009 has now been "bumped upstairs", and there is now a sweet little "drive-by" box to be found nearby that was graciously created by Mama Wolf of NC! Once you find the correct kiosk (there does exist the possibility that my photo might have been used at some other new CDT kiosk as well, but I haven't had time yet to check!), simply stand a couple of feet in front of my picture, take 2 big steps at 200*, 3 big steps at 300*, and then 5 or 6 big steps at 50*. Find an upside-down V-shaped crevice at the bottom of the wall not far from the eastern set of double wooden pillars. Note how a couple of small stones are placed inside it, and then carefully remove them and the small flat stone beneath them to reveal a tiny black pulaski holder! Don't forget to put back all your tools properly, and remember that building trails can be even more gratifying than just hiking them!

Happy Trails!

Before presenting the clue for this box, I would just like to give a little historical background, so that the situation that resulted from another box with an RTRW stamp that we planted in the big state of Colorado many years ago doesn't happen with this box, too!

The box in question was the one we called "Animas Overlook", which we planted while out from RI exploring the southwestern corner of CO between volunteer trail work projects along the Continental Divide in CO and NM in the summer of 2002. It was the first box planted in the Durango area, on a little trail we found out about from a "best children's hikes" book, so we actually thought it was too short for a letterbox hike back then when at least a mile for a box was more the norm. But, by spacing it about halfway around the loop, we hoped it would stand as its own little adventure, and other planters who came later would have hundreds of miles of other trails in the area to choose from.

Well, imagine our surprise when we found out recently that there were now nearly a dozen other boxes on that very same little 2/3 mile loop that we had originally planted on, and that not only the intent of our box (to have folks hike the one little loop to find one box and enjoy the view), but our actual little box with RTRW's lovely stamp had gone "lost in the shuffle", too! One of the newer planters, either completely unaware of the real letterboxing history or trying to rewrite it, even suggested that this was a place started by Coloradoans to show off their stamps - something that couldn't be much further removed from the truth for us Rhode Islanders and how we view letterboxing as being far more about going on individualized adventures than just accumulating stamps!

Now, I suppose it's one thing if a particular person actually wanted to have 40 boxes planted on a half mile loop of their own choosing and actively encouraged others to contribute boxes to be planted there, as Esmerelda did on Mt. Doom, and others have done in other places. However, I'm sure there are many planters who would be rather appalled to find a path that they had chosen to showcase an individual hike and box suddenly inundated with dozens of boxes! (I wonder, for example, how Jay Drew might feel if 40 other boxes were to appear on the way to his original box near Fourmile Falls, or if 14 boxes got strewn like crumbs on the way to a "fourteener" meant to showcase just one?)

Even in as tiny a state as RI, folks have always been pretty sensitive to maintaining the integrity of other people's planting areas and intentions, so this type of "overcrowding" (or "poaching", as we've heard it called in MA), generally does not occur. (except, of course, in the rare case where people who "haven't done their homework" plant a new box right next to a long pre-existing mystery box!;-) So, it is somewhat mind-boggling for us to think that people in such a huge state as Colorado, with so many thousands of miles of as yet unboxed trails, might feel the need to resort to "claim jumping"!

Anyway, we've tried to look on what happened at Animas Overlook as simply the tendency of some folks starting out to "copy-cat", not only location, but even clue and placement style. (Our original box was keyed to a sign, so I guess they figured all the other signs just had to get boxes, too!:-) And of course we've heard that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", so in the logbooks we've tried to be gracious about all the "add-ons" to that by now very overpopulated little trail! But, in truth, we'd really prefer for folks to go find their own trails or mountains to plant on, so this time we're saying it right out: at least for this particular 3-mile section of CDT (and there are over 3,000 other miles still to plant on, so there's no need to worry about running out of stamping space!), please keep only this one box up at the lake as a "destination letterbox hike" in memory of "Wanda and Her Man" (you'll get the joke when you're in the right gulch and in the proper frame of mind!;-)

Anyway, to find the starting place for this hike, you need to find the route that is currently being used for the Continental Divide Trail to cross a major highway east of a presidential tunnel. Indeed, there is practically nothing else at this exit except the CDT trailhead, a large parking lot and the kiosk with my picture in its frame mentioned in another letterbox clue, which was near where we had left this box as a "drive-by" in 2009!

Well, once again after my volunteer trail projects in 2010, I found that I wasn't going to have enough time to swing up to Grand Lake to drop off this box on my way home to RI. However, I did have just enough time to "bump the box upstairs" on a 3-mile climb up to a lovely alpine lake on a piece of trail that is actually one of the "show pieces" of the CDT. Yes, it starts out right behind the kiosk, wide and noisy, being so close to the heavy traffic, but before you know it, you are ascending quietly through the aspens, staying left at two marked junctions, and topping out to a view of the lake in a big cirque before you.

From this first view of the lake, continue towards the "Y" divergence of trail just before the lake and just after a huge chunky pinkish boulder on the left. Stop at the next large boulder directly on the right side of the trail, and sit on the low flat rock by its left side that points 285* towards the lake. Look down to the right of the adjoining big boulder to see how several small rocks fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. After noting their position, remove 3 or 4 of them to reveal the light blue letterbox below. Enjoy a picnic at this idyllic spot and replace the box as found, before heading back down 3 miles to your car!

Happy Trails!

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