Sitting in a tent at the base of a mountain in Colorado, two things go through my mind: I really wish I would have brought my snow pants, and am I making a rookie mistake eating a sandwich inside my tent? I can’t do anything about the snow pants, but the sandwich has me concerned. I’ve seen what my dog will do to empty wrappers that I leave in the garbage can at home. I don’t want to find out if a bear will be just as curious.
Friday, August 12, 2016
I had flown American Airlines from Phoenix to Denver, arriving about 4:30 pm, about an hour later than planned thanks to a maintenance fix on the aircraft. My adventurer friend, Robin Bobo, picked me up at the airport in her familiar powder blue Prius, and we headed southeast of Denver to the small town of Alma. Robin had driven in from Kansas City, leaving the previous afternoon and spending a night at a small public campground. Her camping gear, water, and a borrowed tent for me were stashed in the Prius’ cargo compartment, allowing my suitcase (the smallest that would fit my hiking poles) and backpack to fit in the back seat.
On the way to Alma, we stopped at a Wal-mart to pick up Gatorade and toilet paper. The Wal-mart also contained a Subway, so we purchased sub sandwiches for dinner, although I hadn’t had lunch yet so I ate half of mine on the ride to Alma. I didn’t actually know where we were going, as I had left the hiking plans to Robin. When we started planning this trip, my only stipulation was that there wouldn’t be any technical climbing. Class 1 or 2 peaks would be fine. Robin had already done a few Colorado 14’ers (peaks above 14,000 ft), not to mention climbing Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro (peak at 19,341 ft), so she was looking for something new that her older and less experienced friend could also tackle. She found it in the Mounts Democrat-Cameron-Lincoln-Bross loop. A possibility of bagging four 14ers in one day hike. Irresistible!
We arrive at Alma when it was nearly dark, and after realizing that we’re not even going to find a gas station in this tiny town (that we find charming later) for one last civilized potty stop, we find the road to Kite Lake, which is where the trailhead is located. The dirt road contains many deep ruts and Robin assures me that she’s taken the Prius on other dirt roads worse than this. We pass a few tents along the side of the road, and Robin’s worried that we may not find a camping spot since we arrived a bit late. It’s dark by this time, and we come to a spot in the road where the deep holes are longer than the wheelbase of the Prius. There’s already a few other cars parked on this side of the spot. I had read about this spot hours earlier in the airport when I finally had time to review the hike and drive to it, and several people had recommended not to take a car with less than four-wheel drive past this spot. We decide to camp here, about two miles from the trailhead. We can hear the burbling of a stream near the site, and outlines of mountains flank us to the north, east and west.
Fortunately, there’s a relatively level grassy spot right at the deep ruts in the road, and two tents were pitched on north side of clearing, leaving a good amount of space for more camping. We ask if they mind sharing the space, and set up camp on the southwest side of the clearing near a fire pit. Robin’s got her tent up in minutes, but while the tent she borrowed for me is similar to the one I’ve put up a couple times in Arizona, I’m really slow at putting it up and she helps me figure out which poles go where and how to attach the fly. It’s unfamiliar to her also, and it’s also really dark, so the fly ends up about 18 inches off the ground, making ingress and egress a crawling affair. But it’s shelter and it’s up, so I’m happy. Robin turns in for the night, and I start getting my own tent ready, silently thanking Dean for suggesting that I take a headlamp in addition to a flashlight because it’s so nice to have the flashlight beaming up in the corner but focused hands-free light elsewhere.
It’s also cold. I had looked at the weather before packing for this trip and noted that the forecast temperature at the beginning of the hike would be around 35 degrees, and wouldn’t get much warmer than 54 degrees. I knew we’d be camping at or near the trailhead, so I brought a sleeping bag rated for +15 degrees Fahrenheit, two pair of gloves, knit hat, scarf, and warm socks. I also brought a warm turtleneck that I had purchased at the top of Alpe du Huez in France after not packing for the elevation (in July!) there. But for whatever reason, I had not brought the snow pants that I had also bought at AdH, thinking that would be overkill. At the last minute, even though I had a rain jacket and down vest in my backpack, I also brought my heavy Columbia hot air ballooning jacket. Wow, so glad I did! Living in Arizona, I had forgotten how cold 35 degrees could be. I get things set up, happy that I brought a yoga mat for underneath my sleeping bag because in the dark we couldn’t pick optimum rock-free area to set up the tents. Then, fully clothed with my winter jacket still on, I snuggle into my sleeping bag and start eating my sandwich for dinner, not thinking about attracting bears and other wildlife until a few minutes later.
I think I’ve already decided that I’m making the trip back up to the car to stash the trash, but I’m still worried about the fact that I’ve already eaten in the tent. But there’s nothing I can do about that either. So I finish as much of my soggy sandwich as I want to eat, wrap it up in the plastic subway bag, climb out of my warm sleeping bag, put my shoes back on, and make my way to the car about 200 feet away. I stash the trash in the car, and since I’m out already, I decide to make a potty stop. But since there are still cars frequently coming up the road, I need to scramble up a bit to get to the potty area I used earlier. I take toilet paper, and after using it, I stash it under a rock. There’s a lot of water running in the area, so I figure the next time it rains it will biodegrade away. This isn’t AZ.
I return to the tent and crawl under the fly, wincing at how loud the unzipping and zipping sounds. I take off my shoes, get back in the bag, and suddenly I remember that there’s a whole bag of trail mix in my backpack. I groan, but the right thing to do is to take that up to the car, too. After all, I’d rather inconvenience myself a little now than have to tangle with a bear in my tent later. So out I go again, trying to be as quiet as possible since there’s no movement in any other tent.
I get back to the tent and it’s now 10 pm. It’s getting cold, even in the sleeping bag and even with my jacket on. But I can hear the rushing of water from a river not 100 feet from my tent, and when I went outside, I marveled at the outline of the mountains around us highlighted in the moonlit night.
Confident that I’ll survive until tomorrow, I shut down the iPad to sleep.
I didn’t sleep much as I was cold most of the night. It took a long time to get warm in my sleeping bag as the temperatures dropped to around 35 degrees. I heard other campers get up during the night, and checked my watch once at 2:30 am. About 4 am, I decided to go pee on “my” rock, a white rock that I peed on in the moonlight about seven hours before, before anyone else got up at 4:30. But now instead of moonlight, the sky outside was full of stars, and I sat on my rock looking up–and peeing–while marveling at the stars and Milky Way. What a sight!
Saturday, August 13
We get up, eat cold food and get our backpacks ready for the climb: food, water, and other accessories. It’s so cold that the only thing I change is my pants into hiking pants. I leave everything else on, including the winter jacket. We got lucky thumbing a ride to the trailhead about 2 miles away from where we were camped, and we used the latrine. By the time we started up the trail, it was close to 6 am and the sun was starting to rise. Robin has the climbing details, but suffice it to say that we were slow and stopped often to rest. Robin kept track of the altitude — Kite Lake was about 12,000 feet, the saddle between Democrat and Cameron was about 13,300.
When we got to the saddle, I was feeling winded and my hamstring was not happy with the climbing. I looked at the steepness of Democrat and the fact that it was an out-an-back, and decided that I didn’t need to do it if we were doing the other 14ers. But I told Robin that I would wait for her. So after just a little rest and hesitation, she went off, and I waited for about 90 minutes for her return. I talked with other hikers, one of whom was a first time 14er like myself, but he turned around on Democrat before the top, not hitting 14,000 feet, and said that was good enough for him. As it was a Saturday in August with good weather, the trail was busy, but I found a short segment of time when no one was at the saddle, and I sat in a shelter that I was convinced was made for this purpose and peed. At least I knew I was staying hydrated.
This time at the saddle gave me a good chance to look around and reflect.
When Robin came down, she rested just a little and we started up Cameron. About halfway up, I found another favorable spot and peed again. Maybe there’s something about altitude, but at least I was staying hydrated. Cameron was quite a climb with a couple of false summits. When we rounded what we hoped was the top, we saw no signs and another summit quite a bit away. Oh no! I said, don’t tell me THAT’s Cameron? It turned out that the other peak was Lincoln. By this time both Robin and I were getting pooped, Robin doubly so because she had also climbed Democrat. The sign for Cameron was a log with “Cameron 14,238 ft” painted on it. We took pictures behind it, and then took pictures for a Crossfit group that hoisted the log on their shoulders for the photo.
We talked about Lincoln but decided to skip it, going on to Bross instead. We knew Bross was technically closed to the public as it’s privately owned, but there was a trail down from Bross to Kite Lake to complete the loop and we hoped we would still hit 14,000 feet on the trail to Bross before descending and still count Bross as a bagged 14er. Alas, Robin reported the highest altitude we reached on Bross was 13,940 ft, so we missed 14,000 by 60 feet. I asked if we could round up.
The way down Bross was steep and very sketchy. It took a lot longer for me to get down than it should have, but by this time my legs were shaking, I had a bit of a headache, and I was a little dizzy. Robin was also feeling the effects of altitude. So we took our time, and although I regretted wearing Hokas instead of the Merrets that I had brought along (I wore the Hokas because I was so cold, I wanted to wear double socks and the Merretts were too tight), we got down safely. I will lose both big toenails, and I slightly twisted my ankle, but I felt immense relief when we finally got down into the meadow that signaled the end of the hike.
We got a ride from two high school girls who had borrowed Daddy’s truck and had a heck of a time turning it around but finally did without a scratch. We learned that they went to an adventure high school in Colorado Springs where canyoneering and mountain climbing were part of the curriculum. There’s hope for millennia yet!
After the girls dropped us off at our campsite, Robin started a camp stove to boil water for our meals and then bathed in the icy creek that ran next to the campsite, while I ate an MRE with the boiling water. She cooked couscous for her meals, and we enjoyed a well deserved meal next to the tents while overlooking a beautiful mountain scene. We topped off the meal with left over bourbon balls that I had brought for the hike. The only thing that spoiled the afternoon was a very cold wind that blew, and after a while I suggested that we take a ride to explore the area, basically to get out of the wind for a while. We ended up at South Park Brewing in FairPlay, about 10 miles away. After a beer and chips and queso, we returned to the campsite and Robin announced that she was going to sleep. It was about 6 pm, and she looked beat. I was beat also, but I can’t sleep that early, so I took a few photos, redid my tent and typed this up.
It’s now nearly 8 pm, the sun in almost down and it’s getting cold. Time for one more potty stop and maybe something to eat before I tuggle into my sleeping bag and hope for sleep. At least tomorrow night I get to sleep in my own bed. But this adventure and the time with Robin was been well worth the few discomforts.
I’m glad that I don’t have anyone filming me, as the hour after typing the previous paragraph was rather comical. After going up to the car, I ate a couple of rice cakes and drank some Gatorade. My GI system immediately rebelled, and I scrambled up to my potty place just in time, pulling off my black gloves and tossing them to the side before sinking into rocks with wet farts and poo. Yuck. I used all of my toilet paper, but didn’t have a trowel to dig and bury it, so I just left it, knowing that Robin would disapprove. I would just have to clean it up in the morning
Then I went to the campsite, but felt that I had to go again, so I went to the rock pile that I used the previous night. More yuck. But fortunately I had picked up more toilet paper from the car. I crawled into my tent and started preparing for bed, realizing that the hand warmers I had put in my socks were actually warming, so I reached for another to put under my glove, and realized that I didn’t have my black gloves. Groan! The last place I remembered them was at the potty stop near the car, so I put my sandals on over my socks and crawled out of the tent and up to the potty stop, realizing about halfway up that I forgot the trowel again, and didn’t care.
The sandals made going up the loose rocks very precarious, and I slipped a few times. By this time it was almost 9 pm and getting dark. But I could still see enough to tell the black gloves weren’t there. But since I was there again, I used the potty again. Then I made my way to the white rocks. No gloves there either. Frustrated and very tired, I decided to give up and go to bed. I put on my other thin socks and put the hand warmers in those instead.
I didn’t sleep very well even though I found chemical hand warmers and put one each between layers of socks and in each glove. I was again fully dressed with my winter coat, and while my hands and feet were warm, the rest of me shivered through the night. I did get some sleep since I was essentially exhausted, but I got up at 10:21 to go potty again, and looked at my watch at 3:21, 4:43, 5:25 and finally got up a little before six am. I rolled up my sleeping bag and started organizing stuff before waking Robin up about 6:15, and then heading up to the car with my sleeping bag, mat and trowel. I was able to clean up my potty area before Robin even knew there was a problem. I still wondered where my black gloves were.
The mystery of the black gloves was solved a few minutes later when I pulled the space blanket out of the sleeping bag and out popped the gloves. I must have been so tired last night that I didn’t remember picking them up or removing them in the tent! I also found the small battery bank that I thought I had packed in the backpack and wanted to use for charging my phone on the Democrat-Cameron saddle.
We packed up and, both being very cold, decided to have a hot breakfast wherever we could find it. We found egg burritos at a coffee shop in Alma, where I went potty for the first time that morning. When I pulled down my pants, I saw a long, bloody cut along my right thigh surrounded by a colorful bruise. I guess that must have come from when I slipped on Bross and my poles went flying. It didn’t bleed through my hiking pants as far as I know, but I had changed them last night after the poo escapade.
During our beer stop in FairPlay the day before, we had decided to spend Sunday in Breckenridge, settling on an “easy” hike on the Continental Divide. Just a few miles outside of Alma, we saw the Continental Divide sign and stopped. We spent about a half hour wondering around, but never really found the 2.5-mile trail. So we continued on to the town of Breckenridge, arriving about 9 am. The town was already hopping with outdoors people, shoppers, dog walkers, and tourists. We stopped in at the visitors center and Robin asked if the lady at the counter knew of any “Grandma” hikes. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but handed us a list of hikes that start in Breckenridge.
I really enjoyed Beckenridge, not having every been there before and not being a ski person. I thought the ski runs cut into the mountain faces made beautiful shapes, although Robin disagreed with me, mourning for the loss of the cut trees. The town itself retained an Old West character with building facades, buildings from the late 1800’s, and an obvious adherence to a signage building code that kept large signs to a minimum.
We walked around a bit trying to get our bearings, huffed up Four O’Clock trail, and then found Sawmill Trail. Wow, what a find! The trail ran next to a fast-flowing creek with aspens and other trees on either side. After about a mile, the shaded trail ended at a reservoir, and Robin and I both stuck our feet in the lake. The freezing cold water felt really good on our tired and sore feet, and it really felt good on my right ankle, which was sore from being slightly twisted on the Bross Trail the day before.
After hiking back to town, we ate lunch at CB Pott’s taproom, enjoying fried mac n cheese croquettes and yakisob a noodles. We had a very pleasant conversation and did some people watching as we ate outside and enjoyed a 10 oz porter.
The beer got me buzzing, and although we found the Breckenridge Distillery tasting room a few blocks down off of Main Street, I didn’t feel like tasting. So Robin suggested we go to the Distillery itself and take a tour since it was on our way to Denver anyway. I agreed, and we set off for Airport Road and the distillery. It was fun, and I learned that alcohol evaporates more quickly at altitude, so the angel’s share is greater. I didn’t bring back any bourbon, but did buy a bottle of bottle aged maple syrup instead.
We then headed back to Denver quite early for my flight, but I was glad we did since traffic was awful. It took nearly an hour longer than planned.
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