Trip Report - Backpacking in CO

Hola! I, unfortunately, have been back in the furnace known as Texas since Tuesday night, so I thought I'd better post a trip report. You know, before I forget what happened. Because I'm old like that; I turned 33 last week. In a nutshell--the weather was beautiful, we saw lots of animals and we got real stinky and dirty, so the trip was a roaring success. Onward, then!

Mike and I packed up all our gear and flew out of our little airport near Dallas on the Thursday morning before Labor Day and arrived in Colorado late that afternoon. It was about a six-hour flight, then a 30 minute drive into Estes Park. As soon as we got into town, we headed straight to the backcountry office at Rocky Mountain National Park to pick up our camping permits. Not 5 minutes into the park, we saw the Bighorn Sheep family above. Look at the fuzzy ears on that behbeh McSheepersons, wouldya?

The next morning, we got ready to hit the trail, bright and early. Well, sort of. Neither Mike nor I are "morning people", so we may have gotten a wee bit later start than we'd wanted. What's 2 hours between friends, right? I'm telling you straight up, though--we need our sleep. Here's Mike at the Lawn Lake Trailhead, just before we headed out.

Here's me on the way to Lawn Lake. I'm pretty sure this was at some point where I was still enjoying the scenery and not wanting to die. Let's just say Mike was a little ambitious with our planned mileage. Did you know all the trails in RMNP go up...and up...and up? Then up some more? And that 35 lb. backpacks are pretty dang heavy? Yeah.


I think the chipmunks were beginning to store up nuts for the winter already. They were EVERYWHERE. We saw dozens upon dozens each day, and most of them were carrying pine cones bigger than their own heads. The ones not carrying food were up in trees chattering really loudly because, I guess, we were bothering them by walking under their tree.

Here's Lawn Lake after we finally got there. 6.5 miles, 5,000 feet of climbing (6,500 -11,500 ft.) with that damn backpack and 5 hours later we got to our campsite. I felt pretty beat up, but LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS!!! OMG. We were right above the tree line.


Here's a shot in the late afternoon where the sun was only shining on the high mountaintops. Gorgeous. My favorite picture from the entire trip.


LLAMAS? For serious? People, why did no one tell me I could have brought a llama to schlep all my shit up the mountain? That would have been an awesome option. Plus, I like hoofstock.


There were these mule deer that kept snuffling around our campsite both days we were there. They scared the bejeezus out of me the first time I saw them. Mike was off getting water and I was in the tent resting my feet. I heard all this rustling and snorfing--I was trying not to have an effing heart attack because I thought it was a BEAR. (I mean, we had to hang our food up in a tree and everything!!! The ranger station even had exhibits of food bags clawed to bits!) And then I saw this snout looking in my tent. A SNOUT THAT COULD HAVE BEEN A BEAR SNOUT. You know, at first glance. So yeah, I am lucky I survived that encounter. We also saw more chipmunks, some bluebirds and a bunny at our campsite. And no, I didn't sleep well, because I was having nightmares about bears and mountain lions mauling me. Seriously.

The next day we had a bit of an unplanned interlude in the trip. Mike had planned for us to go back down the mountain the 6.5 miles (all the trails are out and back), then hike another 4.5 miles to a different campsite the same day. Well, by the time we'd got off the mountain around 1pm, our feet were totally torn up. Mike thought he was about to lose a toenail. As for me, despite wearing my kryptonite Injinji Outdoor socks, I had a blister and a painful abrasion covering the entire bottom and inside edge of my right pinkie toe. I could barely walk, even with moleskin on, so we had to call it a day.

We tried to get a close-in campsite, but because of the holiday, they were all reserved. One of the rangers suggested we look at 4WD accessible sites in the adjacent National Forest (we happened to have rented a truck), so we spent like 5 fruitless hours driving around looking for a place to camp. That we never found.

Mind you, this wasn't normal driving like on roads. Noooooooooo. This was driving up the sides of mountains on less-than-one-lane dirt paths with huge ruts and loose rocks and tree stumps. I thought we were going to roll off the side of the mountain and die. I was terrified and had a deathgrip on the door handle, seat, whatever I could grab. This made Mike in a very bad mood. Gee, I wonder why. I DID NOT SAY A THING--I am NOT a backseat driver. I wallowed alone in my fear of death, thankyouverymuch. What was even worse is that we ended up spending that night in a Travelodge. And an expensive one at that. Eeeew. But at least there was a bed! And a pillow!

The next morning all 4 of our feet were feeling better, so we moleskinned up and headed to the backcountry office (again) to see if we could get a closer permit. The one we previously had for that day included something like 9 miles of climbing. SO not happening. But, we were in luck. We secured one for the Bear Lake Trailhead (where I am, in the picture above) and a campsite on Sourdough Ridge. Only 2.5 miles out and 1,500 feet of climbing. SWEET.


Here's a stream and a pretty flower on the way out.


Okay, you HAVE to click on this picture. Can you see the pond in the distance across the treetops? One of my favorite views of the trip.


Right before we got to the turn off for our campsite, the trail crossed a large boulder field. You can kinda see the trail off to the left there. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it!


Almost as soon as we set up the tent it started to rain and blow, so we were pretty cooped up the rest of that day. We got up at a decent hour the next morning and day hiked (without packs, whew) to this lake and glacier. It was hella cold that morning...at least for a coupla Texans...but pristinely clear and beautiful! We didn't have any curious deer visitors at the campsite, but we saw a Pica. Mike gave it a raisin. AND NOW IT WILL PROBABLY DIE OF MALNOURISHMENT. Poor little Pica.


Here's a view of that lake from a little higher up, around 12,000 feet.


Looking up at a peak on that hike. I like the clouds--it was windy and they were moving really fast.


Here's Mike sitting on one of the glaciers. He was fascinated by the snow. (What is this white frozen substance? On the ground? In August?!)


OMG. I was so cold up there I couldn't feel my toes. Mike did not care one iota. He saw snow. After this we hiked back to camp, packed up and hiked down off the mountain. I got more blisters. Somehow going down is harder on your feet than going up. I do not know why.


We drove the long way out of the park, to try and catch a glimpse of some elk--and we did! A mama and baby munching away on some grass in a meadow, as you can see above. We'd seen a huuuuuuge herd of them--probably more than 50--the first day we were in the park, but didn't stop for pictures. Another time, we saw a whole herd of elk lounging on a golf course and then one walking along the sidewalk later. Again, no pictures...what the heck is wrong with us??? Anyway, even though we were all stinky and dirty--seriously, we could smell ourselves AND each other--we stopped for burgers and sweet potato fries (with a view of course; I saw a prairie dog!) on the way out, before going to the hotel. We have no shame.

You know, I think over the week, we saw just about all the wildlife there was to see, except for a bear or mountain lion, and that was FINE by me.

We stayed at Mary's Lake Lodge, a restored historic hotel on the South end of Estes Park. It wasn't trendy or chic, but homey and very warm, which I think was just what we needed after the backpacking adventure. The linens were soft and fluffy and the shower was hot. I did not want to leave.

Oh, and guess what? As we were checking out the next morning, I overheard the front desk clerk on the phone saying a BEAR had gotten into the grease cans behind the restaurant. Yeah. Glad we were safely in our room.

We got cleaned up and went into town in search of snacks and tee shirts. We found this place, which had HOMEMADE root beer floats. That's homemade rootbeer AND homemade ice cream, in case you were wondering. SOOOOO delicious. As a side note--there have got to be more candy and cookie stores per capita in Estes Park than anywhere in the world. It was insane--the entire downtown smelled like caramel apples and fudge. Drooooool.

There are also a lot of moose-themed stores with cute signs. Here's one of them. After finding our tee shirts and some moose socks, we had an early dinner of steak, baked potatoes, steamed veggies and salads, then headed back to the lodge so we could laze around on the fluffy bed and eat giant cookies. Mmmmmm.

Well, we had to go home sometime. At least we overslept again and left late. Here we are in the airplane flying home and not looking very happy about it. Kindly ignore my hair. It's growing out!

A view of Colorado from the airplane. Bye-bye mountains. Bye-bye cool, crisp Fall weather. Bye-bye cute and fuzzy wildlife. Siiiiiiigh.

And there you have it, our backpacking trip in five bazillion words or less. The full set of photos is up on my Flickr account (see sidebar for link). Both Mike and I have been pining (pun in intended--hah) for the woods all week since we got back. My next post will be a gear review, if for no other reason than my backpack sucked major ass and I want everyone to know not to buy it. Lots of other stuff rocked (pun also intended--I *do* crack myself up), and I will give you the scoop on that as well.

Happy end of summer to all! May the (half or full) marathon training begin! More on that later too. Wink wink, nudge, nudge