Hiking the CO-X

Join India Wood for wild stories about backpacking her own route along a 1,500-mile X across Colorado, including the SE region.

Join India for the “Diagonal” documentary, slide show, and stories about backpacking from the SE to NW state corners in 2020 and the NE to SW corners in 2022. Her route included Springfield, La Junta, Swink, Manzanola, Fowler, Avondale, East Pueblo, Chico Basin Ranch, and Fountain. Her talk includes photographs by her father, Myron Wood, of the same places in the 1960s and 1970s. Feeling stuck in her marriage and life, she decided to learn to stand on her own two feet by hiking. Farmers and ranchers offered help and friendship to this listening Boulderite as she sought places to hike, camp, and cache water. Her challenges included loneliness, dead trails, difficult humans, a derecho, heat waves, high mountain passes, and a Vail bear with a nose for chocolate.

India was born and raised in Colorado Springs and spent teen summers on ranches near Limon and Dinosaur. She was the first person to backpack the Colorado X, in her 50s.

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