The beginning of the hike from hell...
The poor Honda Accord had to travel an abusive 5 mile high-clearance vehicle service road in order to get us to this trailhead. We should have understood that this was foreshadowing for the hiking problems we would soon be facing.
You can see Jen hiking bottom right in this photo. The beginning of the hike was beautiful. We ascended through burn areas under blue skies. A couple we met early on the trail told us we would be seeing a lot of downed trees on the way to the lake, that was an understatement.
So far so good...
You can't tell from here but the trail is about to get more difficult.
We started to have to straddle downed trees. No big deal but annoying with a 40 pound pack on your back. Some of these trees were green and springy, others were dead and when you stepped on them or grabbed a branch for leverage it crumbled under the weight. We both started to get scratches on our legs and arms.
Do you see the trail? No? That's because there is no trail. We just tried to scramble over fallen trees in the right direction...
This sums up the last 4 hours of our hike. We went about 4 miles in 2 hours on clear trail and the last mile took us almost 4 hours. It sucked. We kept thinking, if we just get over this ridge it will be clear. No, not true. I am surprised neither of us broke an ankle or got stabbed by all of the sharp branches sticking every which way. Without a pack this would have been a challenge, with a pack it was downright awful.
We almost gave up completely. We would have had to go back UPHILL for another 4 or 5 hours in order to find a flat place to put our tent. We took a break, I took off my pack and scrambled down 100 yards discovering an open meadow. I went and got Jen and we took a much needed rest in open space. We tried to continue on, being only a half mile from the lake, but encountered more downed trees and decided we'd had enough. We camped here. Luckily it was picturesque and very nice.
At the base of that peak was the lake. So close...
We still managed to have fun remembering how much we love being out in nature, far from civilization.
We found a little spot with running water and this served as our kitchen.
Jen made chocolate pudding.
I hoarded the pudding.
Don't touch my pudding.
Four other groups filtered in to the meadow. None of them could believe how awful the hike had been. Some of the hikers said they had been hiking Colorado for 20 + years and had never seen anything like that in their life. A great first experience! A couple of guys went on to the lake, we assume they made it, hopefully they are not dead. Everyone else found their own spot in this meadow to camp.
Making breakfast, with purpose!
We camped one night, and hoped that somehow, we would be able to find our way out in the morning. I had determined that it would be physically impossible to go back the way we came. It was extremely difficult going downhill amongst the downed trees, going uphill would be unreal. We agreed that if we followed the creek out we might avoid areas where the downed trees had been abundant. I didn't get a good photo of it but from the middle of the meadow you could see where we had hiked in and it looked like the hill had been hit by a shockwave from a nuclear weapon. Apparently small micro storms and bursts of wind were capable of flattening entire sections of forest.
Following the stream downhill and out of the valley we bushwhacked North. It was slow going but better than what we had been in before. After about an hour of some moderate hiking we found a trail and began to follow it. Thank god we quickly met two hikers who informed us that we were headed back to the exact same shitty non-trail we had labored through the previous day. They also told us that if we turned around, we would be following an easy, beautiful trail back to the trailhead and our cars. Sigh of relief.
LOOK, A TRAIL!
We made it back to our car, relieved, tired and sore. Next time will be bringing a map. We will also be calling ahead for trail conditions.
