Ute Pass

Before we backpack over Tom's birthday weekend, we wanted to try Ellie's repaired ACL out on a decent incline and a longer hike. This year, we've been bagging 13ers and have left her at home for those, due to the sharp talus and scree near the top of most tall peaks in Colorado. So, we headed up north of Silverthorne to tackle the rarely used Ute Peak trail. 

We started off on a good trail (which there would be most of the way). Early morning sun shone through the tall pines, and the temp was probably hovering in the upper 40s. A layer of frost was still melting from the night before. Mid August has arrived in the high country. Perfect. 

The trail was a steady climb up, with some steeper spots. Definitely enough to get your heart rate up. We would gain a lot of elevation over the next 5 miles. 

Taking a snack break about halfway up.  Ellie's leg was hanging in there!

We popped out of the tree line eventually around 11,600ft, lost the trail, and headed up a ridge to get some 360 degree views. Ellie had started to limp noticeably on her repaired leg, so we decided to turnaround after we gained the ridge and not continue another mile to Ute Peak. Tom and Ellie on the ridge below. 

We had ourselves a good, sunny break complete with snacks and drinks while enjoying the craggy peaks of the Gore Range. 

We headed back down the trail toward the car, still a long way away. 

One last peek at the Gore Range before we headed into the forest. 

We made it back to the car a little over 5.5 hours from when we started. We gained about 3000ft in elevation and hiked 10 miles in total. Ellie was wiped but she rallied today and her leg looks to be holding. Yay!

This hike was not our normal "mostly above tree line, scrambling over large boulders and small rocks, without a trail, route finding and peak bagging" hike. This one had its own charm - very green (for Colorado, at least), shady, meandering and 95% in the forest. I have to say I prefer the wide open views of high altitude to the somewhat closed-in forest. While shade definitely has its benefits, I long for the views of peaks and the areas above trees now, often windswept, steep and sometimes chilly, but wholly amazing. Colorado has spoiled me with the amazing vistas to be had in those spaces. 

Frozen balls of dents.

Well, we haven't gotten out to the mountains in a couple of weeks, bah humbug. On second thought, that's not entirely true. Last weekend, we drove up to Breckenridge to try to bag Pacific Peak, which was going to be a fun Class 2+ scramble, but as we drove toward Breck, the clouds got thicker and thicker and lower and lower. So, we ended up stopping for donuts (Daylight Donuts, on main street in Breck, YUMMY) and headed back down the hill, very unsatisfied. But if the weather holds, this weekend should be a hiking weekend!! And the following weekend, we are headed to the White River National Forest to backpack and maybe bag a peak there as well.

In other news, Green Mountain got hit with a bad hail storm.  The stones dented up Tom's car pretty badly and ruined our hot tub cover. Of course, Denver's version of storm chasers were out after the storm, and roofing company signs line our streets now. Our roof inspection comes this week, so we may be getting a new roof out of this. The hail was the biggest I've seen out here yet. Hail is common in Colorado, and it seems a neighborhood or two around the Denver metro area gets hit hard each year, it seems this was our year.  You can see the quarter for a size comparison.  Yikes!

 

East Buffalo Peak

Has it been almost a month since I last posted, geesh!  We’ve been doing quite a bit of hiking and have gotten a lot of elevation this summer and I don’t always get to posting a hiking report – I’ve been slacking.  But this peak was a good hike with trees, talus and skeletons, and a pure white arrowhead found by Tom.  J  We’ll be back for West Buffalo Peak, our time ran out and we had a long drive back to Denver.  So, this is the story of East Buffalo Peak, alone.

We got an early start, as usual, picked up our friends and drove down 285 past Fairplay and turned off on a forest road.  We arrived at the “trailhead” – I use this term loosely, it was a forest road that had been closed, not quite a trailhead.  We started off into the trees and headed in the direction of East Buffalo Peak.  This area is a maze of old forest roads, mostly overgrown and a bit difficult to navigate.  We realized that it was going to be very easy to overshoot the “path” we took, so we started leaving markers along the way – branches propped up, marks on the ground, etc.  We probably lost some time in those trees, figuring out the best way to get to the ridge we needed to gain, but we eventually popped out of the trees (for a minute) and got an eyeball on the target once again.

So, on and up we went.  I’m not sure if this area is a popular hunting area for man or beast, but elk and deer bones were EVERYWHERE in a few meadows we crossed.

Unfortunately, those two heads came back home with us, I’m just waiting for them to be on display in the front yard.  Ugh.

We finally emerged from the trees for good and had a steep grassy slope to climb to get on top of the ridge to the peak.

Taking a break on the saddle.

We tried to pose for a picture, but Tom decided to goof around instead, so we got a somewhat more candid shot.

From here, it was my favorite (not) talus.  This field was pretty stable, but it’s still unnerving at times when something shifts and you recall all the stories about rock slides triggered by hikers – some ending very badly.  You can see my friend Andi lower on the picture and Tom perched way on top, he took the high road and went up and over the ridge.

The final push up to the ridge was pretty steep, but grassy and easily navigable:

Taking another break before moving on – there were some snowball fights and general snow fun at this stop.

 

Then

Then we got down to climbing the last bit to the summit.  On top it was grassy, flat and had amazing views – simply fantastic.  And, of course, as on most 13ers, we had it all to ourselves:

We toyed with the idea of heading over to West Buffalo from this peak, but it would’ve added probably 2 hours onto our hike and put us back in Denver pretty late on a Sunday evening.  So, we opted to save that one for another day.

All in all, a great hike, not too difficult and we found plenty of solitude.  I snapped this just before we entered back into treeline on the way down.  These high meadows are one of my favorite things about off trail hiking – they are peaceful, green and filled with nothing but nature.

We’re hoping to hike again on Sunday, so look for another report!

Kuss Peak

We set off at 6:30am, drove to Alma, Colorado and turned off on a gravel road toward Mosquito Pass.  There was only one other car at the pull off point (not really a trailhead).  We geared up and hiked up the rough 4wd road toward North London Mill, enjoying great views to the south and what I believe to be Pikes Peak in the center of the photo. We also had a perfect bluebird day, nothing but blue skies as far as the eye could see.

 

The old mine building.  It was one of the biggest gold strikes in Colorado and closed during WWII, after 70 years of operation.

After the mine, we went up a short distance to the saddle between London Mountain and Kuss Peak (our destination).  We left the trail and headed straight up talus to Kuss Peak.  Pictures below - Tom on the way up a steep section and then the view of Continental Divide summits, an impressive lineup for sure.

From the top!

After summitting Kuss at 13,548ft, we decided to take the south ridge off the peak, dodge more than a few large snowfields and head over to the South London Mine, which we spotted on the way up Kuss, and Tom really wanted to check out.  It had to be about 2 miles across a wide open basin to the mine, but it was a beautiful hike.

Lots of water to cross in the Mosquito basin.

 It is wildflower season in the high country!

  Very cool snow formations.

Tom with Kuss Peak behind.  We approached on the right side and descended on the left side.

We reached the mine and poked around the old dilapidated buildings for quite a while.  Very cool, tons of old equipment around there as well.  I know it was a very hard life for those miners, but damn, they had great views!

The nicest house around the mine.  Kuss Peak is in far back left (where we came from).

Inside what we believe to be the managers home - it was very nice and paneled.  The workers quarters were much more modest.

So, after we visited the mine, we had 2 choices.  We could either backtrack the way we came or try to skirt around London Mountain - the behemoth that laid between us and the car.  Well, of course, we opted to explore and started around the edge of London Mtn.

Tom heading for the ridge ahead, so we could get the lay of the land.  If it was a steep talus or scree traverse between us and the car, we'd have to make a call.

We eventually made our way around the front side and this is the very steep view we were treated to, the road we came in on is very visible. 

We kept heading toward the car and came across multiple avalanche chutes.  In this one you can see the broken trees sticking up out of the snow.  At least the avys had cleared the vegetation out somewhat and it created areas that we could traverse easily.

We made it down to the creek and bushwhacked through trees and willows for probably another 45 minutes before we hopped a roaring Mosquito Creek and hoofed it up about a 1/2 mile to the car.

 

I'd say our general route is below.  The red X at the top is the start/end point, the one at the bottom is the South London Mine camp.  We may have been a bit higher up on London Mtn coming around the front.  We ultimately met the road back at the London Mill.  It's a great loop and if you like to explore old mines and bag some peaks, this area is well worth exploring!

 

All in all, a great hike.  Kuss Peak isn't anything fantastic on it's own.  It's a relatively "easy" 13er, but with the fantastic views and history of the area with the old buildings and mines, it's a wonderful day spent at elevation.  We hiked for 7 hours and covered probably 10-11 miles in total, at least 8 of that was off trail.  Get out and explore!  There's nothing quite like standing on the side of a mountain and knowing that it's likely no person has been in that same spot for a very long time.  :)

Hello Hiking Season.

Well, hiking season is here - summer hiking season, that is.  It's getting very close to snow-free in some places!  We had a snowy winter here, which made for great skiing for a long spring, but now it's time to switch to summer adventures.

Tom and a friend went camping last weekend, so the wives headed out to *try* to bag a 12,000 peak near Frisco.  We failed.  However, it was a great up-up-up trail, hiking about 8 miles roundtrip and gaining probably 3000 feet of elevation. We were shooting for Eccles Pass or maybe even Eccles Peak, but the snowfields (and our lack of snow equipment) turned us back.  But not before we had a great hike with the dogs.

Near where we were forced back by snow, we had a river crossing - we spent a good 20 minutes walking up and downstream, off trail, looking for a good crossing point - through very wet willows, swampy ground and bushwhacking a bit.  But in the end, the picture below was the "best" spot to tackle it.  One of Andi's dogs is a bit terrified of crossings like this (pictured below, looking very trepidatious), and in his defense, this stream was kicking, very deep and moving very fast - we searched the area and came up with an old dead log and reinforced the crossing area - anything for the dogs!  Ez and Beanie made it across and we continued on up the trail.

Past this crossing, we were forced off the trail and into the trees again and again by snow.  We really REALLY tried to push through the trees, and after a lot of post-holing and dodging snowbanks, we came to this view of Eccles peak.  We considered going straight up this side and avoiding the snow covered pass, but decided against it.

Some of the snow we were going through and around.

View heading back down the trail.

The aspens are slowing greening up!

Lake Dillon as we were almost back to the car.  The views out here are incredible. 

All in all, a great day for a hike.  We got some elevation, fantastic views and a nice workout - oh, and of course, 2 tired dogs.

This weekend we hope to tackle 2 13ers south of Fairplay - look for that trip report soon.  Hopefully we make it to the top (and back down) safely and successfully!

Is it summer yet?!

So, I've been a blog-slacker.  Maybe a "slogger"?  I'm not sure there's a proper term for that...and that's the best I can come up with.

I think I haven't been blogging because, well, spring has been very cold and rainy in Colorado and that puts severe limits on getting out on the trail and having adventures in general.  May is a bit early for hiking, as most of the peaks are still snow covered, and ski season is over for most people - aka "mud season" in the mountains because, well, it's muddy. 

This winter we played in the trees SO MUCH, honing our skills for what we hope will be an intro to backcountry skiing next year...this was our view from our skis/boards quite often.

We closed down Mary Jane/Winter Park this season with good friends and had some "follow the leader" fun in the trees that backfired once...

 



 Next, came the chickens.  5 new little ones - 2 for us, 3 for a co-worker.  They are all still in our basement in a homemade brooder, growing and feathering their little hearts out!

 

Next, came the foster cat (we call him Fred, William, Frank, Murphy or whatever comes into our head that day).  He's got a severely broken leg and lots of hardware in it.  He's recovering with us until he can move onto his forever home.  I'm not sure he's chicken friendly, but since he's not allowed to go outside anyway, that's OK.

 

 

Finally, finally the snow is off the trails and, if we aren't suffering from spring rain, they are also dry enough to strap on my running shoes and get out there!  This was taken from my backyard...well, my backyard open space just a couple of long blocks from our house.  I love living on the west side of Denver, the open space and foothills are so close.

 

 

In other news, we are (of course) brainstorming about our next trip.  We were set on Ecuador, but I'm having a hard time getting excited about South America, so I think we may head to Greece and explore some ancient ruins, see history up close, eat as much food as we can, and maybe chill on one of their many beautiful islands.  But first, we must have summer in Colorado - complete with TONS of hiking, backpacking, trail running and mountain biking.  Bring it on!

 

Where does the time go?!

Wow, it's been a month since we got back from Sri Lanka...hard to believe!  And I haven't posted one blog. 

Basically our month stacked up something like this...

Snowy trail runs, one of my favorites. 

Ice covered trees in the mountains in the early morning. 

We said goodbye to our temp-cat Fritz. He went back to live with his perma-fam in their new house. 

And speaking of chickens, the ladies are loving the green grass and open dirt. Nap time below. 

And of course we've been skiing/snowboarding a good bit. March was insanely good to the mountains this year. One week I swear it snowed nonstop. 

It's starting to turn warmer here. I'm crossing my fingers we don't get our annual tree killer cold snap, but it's been nice to switch back to dirt trail runs and even mountain biking. Wahoo!  Happy Spring everyone!