Annabelle and Ben have been planning to hike The Colorado Trail beginning in Durango, Colorado for over a year. All began smoothly after they departed on June 6, 2022, but…..on Saturday night 6/11/2022 I got the following emergency satellite message from Annabelle and Ben:
“Hi mom, it's A. I have an infected blister and I need to get to an urgent care. We are about 14 miles away from Molas Lake Campground. We should arrive there about 5 pm tomorrow evening. I don't know if you or Rebekah would be able to pick us up there tomorrow night or not. We are going to take a few days off and reassess. Otherwise things are going well, I love you a lot.”
Rebekah and I didn’t quite know what to do, so I called my friend Leah who lives in Montrose and asked for help since Montrose is only an hour and a half from Molas Lake and Rebekah and I were about six hours away.
Unfortunately Leah explained that the road to Molas Lake and Silverton after one leaves Montrose and arrives in Ouary is one of those scary mountain roads and Leah really didn’t want to do it. I asked if Leah had any friends in Montrose I could pay to help us since it was an emergency, but she explained most of the friends she had there were old and weren’t comfortable with the drive.
One of the reasons it was an emergency was that Annabelle and Ben were on a trail, not near a trailhead or civilization, and they were beginning to run low on food and water. They couldn’t just stay in one place to rest, and Annabelle’s foot was getting more and more infected.
I then called my friend Susan in Pagosa Springs, but unfortunately Susan was at a weaving conference in New Mexico. She had a lot of great suggestions though. She also said she’d have driven to where they were and helped them if she’d been home. Just knowing we have a friend like that means so much. Thank you Susan!
Because we were uncertain of where Annabelle and Ben would be, Rebekah and I finally decided to wait until morning and see if we could actually talk to Annabelle and find out where or how to pick them up. That night, we did go to our storage unit in Larkspur to pick up the car that would be able to drive the distance though.
On Sunday morning, Rebekah and I took two cars to Penrose for coffee. Before we left for the coffee house, we received the following text:
We are going to try to get to silverton today. I will try to call from there.
As we were relaxing at Coyotes’s Coffee House, a call from Annabelle finally came.
She was in tears.
“Mom, no one has been willing to give us a ride!”
We learned that Annabelle could no longer really walk, but in agony, she’d walked six miles (while Ben carried both her and his heavy backpacks) that day to get to the trailhead and then the scenic overlook. Her condition was very serious and was an emergency.
Rebekah grabbed my cell phone from me and told Annabelle she’d get in the car and drive the five and a half to six hours to get her, but needed to get an idea where she was.
A few minutes later, Annabelle texted they got a ride to Silverton, so Rebekah called her back. Ben asked every tourist at a scenic overlook if anyone was going north and if they could give an emergency ride. After many unsuccessful “No” replies, a young couple in their mid-thirties felt sorry for them since it was an emergency situation and dropped them off at the first motel they saw that had a vacancy.
It was about 11:30 am when Rebekah left for Silverton. Annabelle and Ben got an early check in at the motel and got a cool suite with two bedrooms! They took showers and rested.
I felt the emergency was really over once they were safely in the motel, but Annabelle still desperately needed to get to a doctor or urgent care on ER as soon as possible, but there was nothing in Silverton.
Rebekah arrived in Silverton around 6 pm. We didn’t know that the road from Gunnison to Montrose was usually closed for road work, but fortunately it was open on Sunday.
Early Monday morning, the kids left for Colorado Springs so they’d get to an urgent care as soon as possible, but because no one had told us yet about the road from Montrose to Gunnison being closed, the kids had to turn around and go another way to Colorado Springs. There were no signs saying the road was closed.
Finally they arrived in the Springs at 5:30 pm and they went to an urgent care. Annabelle was given antibiotics and needs to stay off her foot for at least a week. She is using my knee scooter! She is also soaking the wound.
Ben and Annabelle will not do the entire Colorado Trail; instead, they will do shorter one or two or three day hikes in Colorado once Annabelle can walk again.
They were going to go for another 410 miles!
