The crew had talked about adding a wide switchback in this final approach to Gunsight Pass, but chose instead over two previous days to fill a drainage with rocks and to widen overgrown trail. One day, as they built a rock wall and began a series of water bars - angled gutters to redirect rainwater - lightning struck near Forlorn Pinnacle, atop Osborn Mountain, just east. Thunderheads loomed to the west, and Segerstrom told the crew to bump to lower elevation to grub trail, a simpler task akin to hoeing weeds from an endless garden.
United by the divide
The lofty goal is a trail through five Western states along one of Earth's rough edges
(Page 4 of 4)
The next day they returned to high ground. Peggy Smith, a lean woman who works in steady silence, finished building a water bar, then stopped for a drink.
"I am a little tired today," she said. "I think part of it is being 60. . . . I never used to get tired."
A minute later, she was swinging her pick to move soil for another rock wall.
The crew broke soon after for lunch in the shade of a few firs and fell into the friendly banter that comes with isolated living and shared effort. At the meadow camp below, days had begun and ended with solitary walks to fetch fresh water from a stream or dig a hole for a makeshift toilet. Such traffic wore trails to tents and a fire ring where conversations carried toward dark. Meals came most often from dehydrated packets, and were meant as fuel.
As the crew ate sandwiches during that last lunch beneath the trees, Eric Herbst, 23, a volunteer coordinator for the Continental Divide Trail Association, a nonprofit that oversees trail-building efforts, repeated an old warning he'd heard as a kid: If you don't eat the bread crusts, you won't be able to whistle.
Segerstrom picked up another thread of conversation.
"And if not, in that sleep what dreams may come?" he said.
He lay back and dropped a saltine in his mouth, continuing as he chewed:
"Boy, that's a good play. 'Hamlet' is a really good play."
One last scramble over late-season snow leads from Gunsight Pass to a soft summit. In a high meadow sloping west, seven elk graze. They pick up the scent of humans and warily skirt the edge of a forest until a big-antlered bull among them returns to his breakfast.
To the north, the thick blade of the Wind River Range angles toward the snow-capped Tetons, muted 50 miles distant. To the east looms Three Waters Mountain, an 11,675-foot peak that sends rainfall eastward to the Atlantic Ocean, and westward to the Pacific.
It is 5:30, and soon the orange-fire sun will crest the rocky ridge and its rays of heat and hope will chase away the silver edge of day. Cool gusts stir.
Tom Haines can be reached at thaines@globe.com.
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