Collegiate Peaks Wilderness

Day 15

Miles hiked today: 16.6
Miles from Denver: 198
Elevation: 10,400 ft
Segments 11, 12
Landmarks: San Isabel National Forest, Twin Lakes, Clear Creek, Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, Waverly Mountain, Pine Creek

VIEW MAP

I woke up this morning to see the magnificent sight of Mt. Massive covered in snow, shrouded by clouds. It actually dawned cloudy but then cleared by the time I was out of camp. It was a really beautiful day.

For breakfast I had the other half of the pizza that I had hauled out of Twin Lakes. Nothing like pizza for breakfast on the trail! I exchanged email addresses with Paul, as it seemed I wasn't going to keep up with him, and sure enough I didn't see him the rest of the day. I packed up and started down the trail, which first started around the southern part of the lake. Pretty soon, the Colorado Trail split from the Continental Divide Trail, which has been co-located with the CT for the last 99 miles, at Georgia Pass. The Continental Divide Trail stretches from Mexico to Canada through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, and runs for about 3,100 miles. It is kind of like the longer, rougher, more remote cousin to the Appalachian Trail. The CT will meet up with it again later in the trip.

This section of the CT was re-routed 10 years ago, taking it out of Hope Pass, which is a beautiful climb up into the heart of the Collegiate Peaks but required about 6 miles of road walks. In exchange, the trail now meanders over some ridges due south of Twin Lakes, but stays off of road walks. The section just south of Twin Lakes is a maze of old logging roads, old mining roads and campgrounds. It is well that they label this trail at every turn, because no map or guidebook would have been able to help here. The guidebook also didn't mention the 50 yard long raspberry patch, which slowed me down considerably.

I could see from a distance that I was about to climb a small ridge, but couldn't see much beyond that. I was not prepared for the astonishing valley that was revealed when at the top of the ridge, with Clear Creek meandering nearly 800 feet below. Across from me was a massive mountain side, known as Waverly Mountain. This was also what I was about to climb. From the bottom of the valley, the mountain didn't look as tall, because I couldn't see all the way to the top. But once I started climbing it seemed like it would never stop. The climb was 2,700 feet straight up, and I started up about 2 pm. I knew that on the other side of this climb I would drop about 1,200 feet to another river valley, only to climb up another 1,200 feet to the shoulder of Mt. Harvard. This really added up to a lot of climbing.

In the end, one climb was enough. I descended down to Pine Creek after climbing the shoulder of Waverly Mountain and called it a day. The trail doesn't actually go to the peaks of any of the mountains in this section, mostly because some of these are 14,000 ft peaks and the trail has to be accessible more than a few months a year. For example, the trail crosses the saddle of Waverly Mountain at 11,640 ft, a mile or more east of the 13,309 ft peak. I'm not wishing I climbed more, but it does mean that from the top of the climb I was still in tree line and couldn't see much.

I am now in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, which includes peaks named for Universities like Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Columbia. Mt. Harvard was named first in 1869, then Mt. Yale. After that there was a rush for people to name the yet-unnamed peaks for their alma mater. It is a beautiful area, but the Colorado Trail skirts the range rather than goes through the middle. There is a suggested detour to the CT that I won't be doing, utilizing Hope Pass on the CDT then turning south on the Missouri Gulch Trail which is one of the largest alpine basins in Colorado, and out the Pine Creek Trail to where I am camped tonight. I guess I now know of a great short trip in Colorado for some other time.

Twin Lakes

Day 14

Miles hiked today: 18.8
Miles from Denver: 181.4
Elevation: 9,200 ft
Segments 10, 11
Landmarks: San Isabel National Forest, Mt. Massive Wilderness, Mt. Elbert, Twin Lakes, Wind Spirit Cafe

VIEW MAP

I had set an alarm so that we could set out for Mt. Massive at an early hour. With this being thunderstorm season, it is best to attempt any summit of a 14er as early as possible. Paul was going to attempt to summit too, and neither one of us have climbed a 14,000 foot mountain. Unfortunately, when I looked outside in the morning, it had dawned dark and grey. There was low cloud cover in all directions, and the clouds had just enough shade in them to look menacing. Paul was still optimistic, but I was seeing our chances at Mt. Massive as pretty much gone. We decided to go ahead and hike the 4 miles to the summit trail, and see if the weather changed.

There is a possibility here of bypassing Mt. Massive, camping at the Halfmoon Creek trailhead, and trying for Mt. Elbert the next morning. They are practically the same height, Elbert being 12 feet taller at 14,433 feet. The problem is at this point I just really wanted to keep moving. I passed the Mt. Massive side trail at about 8:45 am, and if I wanted to wait for tomorrow for Elbert I only had another 3 miles to walk to camp.

Paul from D.C.

Instead, both Paul and I made for Twin Lakes, a tiny historic town that's in the valley below, and just a mile off trail. According to a hiker we talked to this morning, there is a restaurant there that serves some pretty good pizza. That was all the convincing I needed. Leaving the two 14ers for another day, I hiked on.

The hike off of the lower slopes of Mt. Elbert was beautiful. A very old aspen forest gave way to ponderosa pine and sagebrush. What had started out as a cloudy day was turning sunny, even hot. The Twin Lakes are spread out far below as you descend, providing a great view of the entire valley.

This turned out to be one of my favorite town stops so far. There is a general store that is run by a very small lady who looks to be in her late 70s. When asked what time the store closes, she said usually when she gets tired, around 5 or 6. There is a very small post office in the back, and she is also the postmaster. I had shipped a box here, and she simply pointed to a pile of boxes on the back shelves and told me to pick out which one was mine.

Everybody we talked to in this town is friendly. There was a minivan that had pulled up, and several children got out. The dad came over to talk to Paul and I, who were sitting on the steps of the general store. After a few questions about the hike, he revealed that two of his kids had puked all over the car on their way through Independence Pass, which is why he was talking to us while all the cleaning was going on. With mail and supplies set, we migrated next door to the Wind Spirit Cafe. This was the place with the famed pizza, and I had been looking forward to this all day.

This cafe was something special. The food and service were really good, but there were also several other people hanging around the cafe, all of whom came over to ask about the hike and were just really nice. The place was owned by a couple from eastern Nebraska, who drive out every summer to run the place. When I asked for a ride back to the trail, Rich, the owner, made a special effort to clean out a few seats in his pickup so he could drive us back out there.

I had a half a pizza in a ziplock in my pack, and Paul and I had decided to hike around the other side of the lake where there was a campsite, about 4 miles. This turned out to be some of the most memorable 4 miles on the entire trail so far. Back in Twin Lakes when I was trying my best to eat as much pizza as I could, it was sunny with lazy white clouds above. We were seated outside on a green lawn and I felt like I could crash on the lawn for a few hours. Now that we had left and were walking around the lake, ominous clouds started to gather around Mt. Massive and Mt. Elbert behind us. I kept checking over my shoulder to see if the clouds had moved any closer, and of course they had. This was looking like one heck of a storm.

All around the lake there are campgrounds and rv sites, which meant that every 3/4 mile or so there was a bathroom building. These are brick structures with mens and women's sides, each with two stalls with outhouse toilets. We were no more than 2 miles from Twin Lakes when the storm finally caught up, and suddenly it seemed prudent to hightail it to the nearest bathroom building.

The storm was so bad that I seriously considered what it would be like to spend the night inside this building. There was an overhang on the roof and we were able to hang out on the leeward side without getting wet, and eventually the storm passed. It was still cold, windy and drizzling a little bit, and didn't seem like it would be a pleasant night. It was 7:30, we had taken shelter for an hour and we still had a few more miles to go.

A little ways down the trail, we took shelter from the rain in another of these buildings. This time the storm was not so bad so I got my camera out, and I noticed that there was a small ray of light appearing between the peaks at Independence Pass, coming over from Aspen. Within 5 minutes there were reds, blues, pinks and purples surrounding all of the mountains to the west, and it was a spectacular sight. You could not take a bad picture of the scene, and it has to rank as one of the best sunsets I have ever seen.

The most amazing thing was as the clouds cleared from the taller peaks, they revealed SNOW. Snow was covering every peak from about 12,000 feet up. How incredible!