ESSIE'S LOG BOOK

Updated Sunday, August 1, 1999 10PM MST

Berthoud Pass

Friday, July 30, 1999

Essie arrived in Kremmling by dark the night before. The donkeys, having journeyed through rough terrain carrying supplies, were exhausted. After maneuvering fields of rock, snow, and deep mud, Mr. Zephyr and Abigail were quite literally on their last leg. The women made the difficult decision to leave them with a nearby rancher, to be picked up later and brought home to Denver.

Mary, still suffering from a sore ankle, decided to pull out in Kremmling, 84 miles into the run. It was a difficult decision. The mother of seven had survived the climb over the Divide, the most physically and emotionally demanding section of the journey.

With the donkeys resting, Essie and Tonya headed out, now two days behind schedule. Arriving at the Food Bank of the Rockies Monday morning, as planned, served as a strong motivator. Loading their supplies into backpacks, the two women, their stride increased, moved down Highway 40 toward Byers Canyon and Hot Sulphur Springs. By afternoon, the sky once again filled with ominous clouds.

"We were headed to Winter Park when it really started to rain," Essie said. "It was hard, it was really hard. I was thinking of the pioneers; there's an old saying, ‘you need to walk a mile in my shoes.' When you're up on that mountain, you see nothing but one mountain after another and rock and stones and no means to get water."

The wearied women rested briefly Friday evening, then continued through the night. After a half hour nap at 5 a.m., they started once again. Berthoud Pass, 11,315 feet above sea level, stood before them: their final pass over the Continental Divide.

Saturday, July 31, 1999

"I have spent all my life in the woods," Essie said, "learning to survive. You just don't tamper with Mother Nature. We slept 2 ˝ hours in 33, trying to be on schedule. You have in your heart an itinerary, but you have animals, a donkey that keeps stopping to sleep for 15 minutes and you can't get him up, it becomes more difficult. You've got the rain, the hail, the wind. You have all these things and you know that you have made a commitment to someone. That means the time is on you. We'll be there at 11:00 am on Monday."

"I would like to have the burros with us. But we could not use them because their feet were so sore they could not walk. The terrain was so bad." Essie said. "We're going to buy those burros. There was a bond there. There was a loyalty there. If I had a tarp over my head and my burro could not see me, he would come pull it off to make sure that I was underneath that tarp. He got loose one night and he comes over to the campsite. Never asking for anything but just giving."

Tonya, tired

"You learn about what's called the Laws of the Universe," Tonya said. "You do not control them. You must put yourself in alliance with the laws and learn how to survive within them, and things work. If you think you are going to run everything, you are going to die. We started running out of water, we were late on schedule, the terrain was really rough on the top. It was noon on the 2nd day and we were very low on water with nothing in sight. We knew we weren't going to get out of the woods until late Wednesday. So how much water? How much food?

"We had a blazing sun and not much water. That's when we found the creek. And you find that you start being aware of the risks, you start feeling that fear in yourself. You also start feeling the need for insight and foresight. Teamwork is critical. Not everybody can do everything all the time. People are stressed out. You can't expect people to do what they could do in a nonstressful situation. The most important thing is you have to rise above it. You have to rise out of yourself for something more important or you just don't survive.

"And there's always things that happen that you can't even imagine are going to happen," Tonya continued. "The smallest little thing can turn into a gigantic crisis. It has a lot to do with not letting your emotions carry you away. Because you do experience a lot of emotions. I phased in and out of lots of emotions. I'd space out, then I'd be really alert, I'd feel nervous, and the fatigue. The fatigue really sets in too and your feet really hurt and you wonder how the animals are going to be. I got separated from Essie through the mountain lion territory because "Abby" planted her feet and wouldn't move. I was out there totally by myself. I thought, I know where I am. Something could happen here. What would I do?

"I finally faked her out and got her moving. It took 30 minutes. A lot could happen. A rock slide, the burros are slipping, they've got all your gear, there's a drop off and they're looking over. What if they get nervous? Over and over, in one second, the situation can change and you're not dealing with what you thought you were. You have to be able to compensate for that in your mind," Tonya said. "And then the hardest part of all is it's day after day after day. You have to hold up. You feel like saying, I can't do this. If you don't, you don't survive."

Lighting, rain and hail plagued the climb over Berthoud Pass, south of the resorts surrounding Winter Park ski area. Their muddied and torn pioneer dresses, now covered by raingear, bore traces of a marathon race against time. Rock and mud pooled along the roadside with tourists, RVs, and truckers hovering frightfully close to the small shoulder area they walked. In 33 hours the women had traveled a total distance of 84 miles. They made up lost time and were close to being on schedule. By 4:00 pm, however, they still had 17 miles to go before resting for the night in Idaho Springs.

Wet, determined women