Collegiates Three Day Loop

05 Saturday Jul 2014

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CDT, Collegiates East Loop, Collegiates West Loop, Colorado Divide Trail, continental divide, Cottonwood Pass, Eddyline, Texas Creek, Winfield

I wake up at what becomes our typical morning rise – 5:30am. Mike is already up and packing his gear. He’s fresh and ready for another day. I monitor his breakfast to ensure he eats plenty because today will be a Bataan 16 mile march. The altitude and amount of climbing should be less strenuous but that distance carting a 35 pound pack isn’t trivial. The plan is to carve out a mini 3 day loop from the 160 mile overall Collegiates loop. Our original plan had been to hike southbound down the western loop but the snowpack changed that yesterday. And we obtained reports from other northbound thru-hikers that other segments are impassable as well.

Today begins with a 6 mile stretch on a jeep road that follows Clear Creek down to its reservoir. We pass through Winfield, an old mining town – ghost town now – that sits unattended as a walk through museum of sorts. Pretty cool. The museum signs tell stories of water feuds and killings. About the time we discover we’re low on water ourselves, the creek becomes fenced in by a local ranch with no-trespassing signs that warn of prosecution. This is funny at first in light of the Winfield stories, but we actually are running low on water and have a full day’s hike in front of us.

Our experience hiking this segment of the east Collegiates Loop in 2011 suggests we might not find much water. That was later in the year and the creeks should be running strong now, but do we risk it? We find a good spot to jump the fence and rehydrate our camelbaks on the private ranch land. Let them shoot us. This is a health and safety issue. We quickly reach the trailhead to the CT after this resupply and launch up a sizable hill. The first photo above shows us on this climb with Clear Creek Reservoir and the private ranch below us in the background. The top of the ridge has us enter countless aspen groves like the one pictured here. Turns out there are a couple of strong running streams once we crest the ridge.

Fortunately the final ten miles on the eastern loop are mostly in the trees because today is hot. And we take advantage of every water source we encounter. We’re nearly giddy with relief once we spot the Twin Lakes coming down from a ridge. Sixteen miles with heavy packs, up and down massive hills, at altitude, is tough.

Even La Plata, the trail master, is exhausted. He revives himself by skinny dipping in the Twin Lakes. Likely as unauthorized as our water rustling earlier in the day. Mike and I soak our feet. We’re true trail trash by now. About the only thing we haven’t done is frequent respectable dining establishments with three days of sweat and trail dirt in our clothes and hair. We do that next.

From the Twin Lakes trailhead, we drive 20 minutes south to BV – our newly adopted mountain town that serves as base camp. We dine at Eddyline Brewery and not one of us thinks to clean up in the restroom. Too much hiking in the sun makes you stupid. Total trail trash. Eddyline, as well as a micro brewery, is essentially a pizza and burger joint. I don’t recommend ordering a steak, it’s not their specialty. We’re all satiated with food and beer by the time we leave. We cross the street and stealth camp along the Arkansas River. Tomorrow will be a rest and recovery day at the Mount Princeton Hot Springs.

Collegiates West Loop

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Colorado Trail

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Tags

AT, Buena Vista, BV, CDT, Clear Creek, Collegiates, Collegiates West Loop, Colorado Divide Trail, Colorado Trail, Coney Island, CT, DIA, high school reunion, Hope Pass, La Plata, Mike O'Neill, PCT, Robert Graham

I leave for the airport in another hour or two. I will pick Mike up this morning from under the Southwest Air Arrivals sign at DIA. His Southwest Flight 4316 from Austin arrives at 10:15am and he should be standing there by 11am.

I’ll bring along a photo album of my 500 mile Colorado Trail hike with Rob from three summers prior for Mike to peruse on the drive to Buena Vista. We’ll take Hwy 285 which I find more scenic than I-70. The two routes are equidistant. I plan to begin telling tales of the danger and pain that Mike can expect over the next week of backpacking. For instance, I’ll inform him, “Trailheads invariably reside along creek beds so that, regardless of direction, you begin hiking uphill. Your calves go numb after a half hour and never really thaw out the rest of the day. Whatever remains of your burning thighs is completely shredded on the subsequent thirty minute downhill. All you will think about for the next eleven hours is dinner to refuel your unsustainable calorie burn.” Mike will no doubt attempt to change the subject but I’ll maintain this dialog the entire three hour drive to BV. I’ll watch for the color to drain from his face when he spots the massive 14ers that will dominate our windshield coming down out of the canyon into BV. I’ll tell him these are the foothills to where we’ll be backpacking on the Continental Divide Trail further west. If Mike begins to feign altitude sickness, I’ll change the topic to dinner. “Want to do Sushi tonight? There’s a place on East Main Street called Asian Palate. They pour a wicked Saketini.”

I would of course only treat a good friend so poorly. I met Mike in 1976. Both our families recently relocated to Texas for jobs. Mine from Iowa. Mike’s dad worked for IBM and they moved down from Poughkeepsie. Nearly everyone’s parents worked for IBM in our high school as IBM was turning off the lights in their New York factories and joining the sunbelt, tech crowd in Austin. We first met on the football team. Then basketball. Then track. We both realized we weren’t big enough for Texas football and joined the cross country team our sophomore year. Running turned out to be our sport as we lead our team to State our senior year. Making state in Texas is like making global in smaller states.

Mike went on to UT but later joined me at Texas State to run Cross Country for a year. I believe he double-majored in either accounting or finance and information systems. Mike, Rob and I got into triathlons after college for maybe a year or two and trained together. Mike soon married, had kids and moved to Atlanta for a job. We went twenty years without seeing each other until my firm acquired an Atlanta cyber security company and I began to travel there.

We hook up with Rob (trail name La Plata until he completes the CDT) in BV. La Plata has solo through-hiked both the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and the Appalachian Trail (AT). He section-hiked the Colorado Trail (CT) with me over a six month period in 2011. This new 80 mile section of the CT that we intend to backpack coincides with the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) along the western side of the Collegiates, so La Plata is killing two birds with one stone. He’ll hike the section south of Monarch Pass earlier today while Mike and I are driving.

Rob moved to Texas his junior year, meeting Mike and me during our sophomore year – on the cross country team. Both of Rob’s parents were IBMers. Ironically, I’m the only one of us three to work for IBM now. Perhaps not so ironic. La Plata was an intense hiker even back then. We nick-named him Trail Master during one of our storied camping trips to Pedernales Falls. La Plata obtained his EE from UT and worked a few years for Lockheed before going back for a masters in education in physical fitness. He married, moved around a bit – Seattle, then Portland – before settling in Colorado. We’ve been hiking together since. We always would say, “We need Mike to join us.”

Mike and I will find La Plata somewhere in BV. We’ll shuffle his car to the trailhead atop Cottonwood Pass and descend back down to BV for dinner. Mike and I will have lunched earlier on the road trip in Baily at Coney Island. La Plata has a stealth camp setup near the Arkansas River where we plan to ensconce for the night. Sunday, we’ll head for the Twin Lakes trailhead to launch an epic backpacking excursion.

Gore Range Trail

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Colorado Trail

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CDT, Colorado Divide Trail, Dillion Dam Brewery

Fall in the mountains means snow. I drove through some freezing rain and snow on my way up to meet Rob in Silverthorne Friday evening. I think the place we met – the Dam Brewery – is actually in Dillon, but what’s the difference. It’s the massive Summit County Sprawl. This area offers everything to the outdoorsman and it’s making the transition to ski season. We hiked through this area, mostly Breckenridge-Frisco-Copper, last summer doing the Colorado Trail. We returned to hike part of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). We mistakenly thought a section of the Gore Range Trail makes up the CDT. It doesn’t, at least not anymore. But what the hell. It was on some CDT map at some point in time so we’re including it in our mutli-year quest to hike the entire CDT.

We stealth camped at a CT trail head in Copper, same place we camped before hiking through Copper Mountain as part of the CT last summer. As you turn off I70 onto Hwy 91 at Wheeler Junction, you drive past the traffic light that would take you into Copper Mountain and turn left a few yards down the road into an overflow parking lot. Toward the back of this lot is a CT trailhead that would take you up over the Ten Mile Range into Breckenridge. After the brew pub dinner we dropped off Rob’s car at the Mesa Cortina Trailhead in Silverthorne, then we setup camp here and relaxed in our camping chairs star gazing through gaps in the low cloud cover.

I slept great, despite regular sweeps by the Copper Mountain snow plow patrol with colored lights that looked like lasers streaming through my tent. We woke around 5:30am to snow covering our tents and maybe a half inch on the ground, but seemingly warm. There was no wind. We broke down camp and sipped coffee while discussing whether to start from here or drive a little closer. We ended up parking near the intersection at the gas station. It opens at 7am and has a surprisingly cozy coffee shop and bakery attached to its east side. We enjoyed a civilized breakfast and hit the trail at 7:30.

The trail begins on the northwest corner of the Interstate and Hwy 91 intersection. This is my first outing this season where I needed to wear winter gear. I mostly wore what I would refer to as transitional gear – spring and fall types of garments. My pants are thin quick-dry material. I had knee-high gaiters to protect my legs and feet from the snow but honestly it didn’t occur to me to wear snow pants. I will next time but these thin hiking pants worked out perfectly combined with the gaiters. I also wore a ski jacket but carried that more often than not and was comfortable with 3 layers of shirts and a wind breaker. We found ourselves removing layers within minutes and only needed the heavy coats when crossing some of the passes. Eventually I removed all but one shirt and my shell.

Hiking this direction, the trail heads up first to Uneva Pass. Visibility was poor and the wind at the pass made the light snowfall feel blizzard-like. The snow fell steadily most of the day but we could still make out the trail for this first hump. The pass was just above treeline and the wind was only an issue when either above treeline or crossing open meadows. Much of the hike was through trees.

Half way to Eccles Pass, the second big hump, we had the opportunity to bail out by taking the North Ten Mile Trail down to Frisco. We considered this as an option if the weather became dangerous. The trail was becoming deeper in snow as we progressed but Rob’s trail reading skills are expert. Still, coming down from the third hump at Red Buffalo Pass we lost the trail. We continued high on the ridge for a bit and then headed straight down into the creek drainage. The Mesa Cortina Trail is supposed to lead us out along the South Willow Creek. Sure enough, we ran back into the trail within a few minutes of bushwhacking.

The snow began to thin out fairly quickly now that we were headed down. The visibility never cleared but it did stop snowing at some point. There were a number of small lakes – none of them frozen over yet. We met our only other hiker on this final segment. He appeared to be a Chinese national based on his accent. Nevertheless, he was sporting a rifle and hunting for Elk. Not sure how he intended to carry any game out by himself.

The final segment was scared from a Bark Beetle infestation. Massive amounts of downed trees. The ones left standing looked pretty sad. You can see some of the dead brown in this picture, especially if you click on it to enlarge the photo. As we neared the trail head in Silverthorne, we began to see views of Dillon Lake and the Summit sprawl. This would be a great area to own a little condo. Incredible access.

Rob and I returned to the Dam Brewery to recover from our ten hour, twenty mile hike. The place is good enough for a return, and we knew they had the beer and menu our bodies were looking for. We ordered a pitcher of the velvety McLuhr’s Irish Stout. Ten hours was a longer day than we anticipated, but the snow slowed down our progress. I suspect trekking poles saved this from being a twelve hour hike. Haven’t used those in some time and they were a huge help today. We intend to continue hiking segments of the CDT, but expect to need snow shoes next time around. Certainly snow pants.