Northern Colorado Continental Divide Hike
Wyoming to Muddy Pass
Introduction
In 1980, we decided to break away from the yearly 50-mile backpack trips
we had been doing with the Boy Scouts and try something more challenging
- hike the Continental Divide from Wyoming to Tennessee Pass. We allocated
just over 3 weeks for the trip, which would cover about half the state
of Colorado. Then in 1981 we would complete the trip to New Mexico.
At the time, there was no official Continental Divide Trail through Colorado
and no guidebooks to help us pick a route. Jim Wolf's Northern Colorado
guidebook (Volume IV) did not come out until 1982, so we were on our own
to plan a route which differs from the actual CDT in many places.
We did refer to Eric Ryback's "The Ultimate Journey: Canada to Mexico Down
the Continental Divide" for ideas. Our goal was to stay within two
or three miles of the Continental Divide at all times, which proved impossible
in several areas. Our group consisted of Ed (Dad), Jeff (age 16) and Bill
(age 14). Diane (Mom) and Donna provided support in terms of restocking
us with food and clean clothes at three restock points.
Our
initial plan was to drive up to Steamboat Springs on August 1st and start
the hike on August 2nd from about 1/4 mile south of the Wyoming border.
We managed to get out of Boulder early and decided to go ahead and put
a few miles in on August 1st. Now the drive to the "trailhead" did
not go quite as well as we planned. Of course, the USGS topographic
map was out of date, the roads on the forest service map did not match
the roads we drove on and there were several new logging roads. The weather
did not cooperate either; low clouds and some rain limited our visibility
making it even more difficult to figure out where we were. We were
off to a good start. Somehow we managed to find ourselves at the
end of a road that was not on the topo map, but we thought it was close
to the Divide. There was an old jeep road at the end of the new forest
service road that headed east, uphill towards what we believed was the
Divide.
We said our good-byes and hit the trail at 4:10 p.m. After five minutes
of hiking, the jeep road took a turn south and continued in the wrong direction.
So we backtracked towards our starting point and took off our packs to
scout out the trail. Ed headed up east towards the Divide, while Bill and
Jeff scouted the area for the pack trail shown on the map. After about
10 minutes, Ed had found the stock driveway that we would be following
along the crest of the Divide for our first day. It turned out the new
logging road put us closer to the Divide than we originally planned, so
that was a bonus. After we got to the Divide, we decided to double-check
the maps since we had planned on a longer hike. After looking around and
through our packs, we could not find the maps anywhere. Bill and
Jeff thought this was quite funny that in our first hour we managed to
get lost and loose the maps. Ed headed back down to where we had dropped
the packs earlier and sure enough, he found the maps there.
Now we were really off on the hike. The "trail" stayed on top
of the Continental Divide and consisted of a stock driveway that tended
to vary from a single track to multiple treads spread out over 100 feet
wide in places. It was well marked with old, yellow, metal stock
driveway signs so it was easy to follow along the rolling hills of the
Sierra Madres. We hiked about 8 miles and camped on the Divide at 9400
feet. It was a nice camp spot just above the head of the South Fork Hog
Creek, which flows north into Wyoming. Bill and Jeff have some minor blisters.
We ate sandwiches for dinner and headed to bed at 8:30. It was a restless
night and no one slept well since we were all thirsty with very little
water left for the night.
First thing in the morning, we hiked down to the creek to get some water
for breakfast and to fill our canteens for the day. Water filters
were not very common in 1980 and we had yet to learn about Giardia, but
we did use 1 or 2 drops of Clorox beach per quart to purify our water.
We would each carry two full water bottles on the dry segments up on the
Divide; one clear Nalgene bottle in the pack and one green Oasis canteen
attached to the hip strap.
The terrain became a bit more scenic when we got off the stock driveway
and onto a real trail that droped east off the Divide down to the West
Fork of the Encampment. This trail took us past West Fork Lake and up the
Encampment River. We reached our destination early because of the
head start the day before, so we hiked an extra mile up to Gem Lake and
camped there at 1:00. Gem Lake (10,149') is a nice little alpine
lake at the base of Buck Mountain, in an area where the Sierra Madres are
quite a bit more rugged than their rolling hills to the north. Two men
on horseback reached the lake at 2:00, so we no longer had the lake to
ourselves. Bill and Jeff enjoyed a lazy afternoon of fishing and swimming.
The fishing was very good for 8" to 11" Brook trout. Bill caught 5 fish
and Jeff caught 4. Ed maintained the journal using his new "Space
Pen" and waterproof tablet from REI. Tomorrow the difficult hiking would
begin.
An
early start before 7 a.m. had us back down to the Encampment River and
through the Encampment Meadows before the sun was over the ridge to the
east. Mt Zirkel and the Sawtooth Range were basking in the early morning
sun ahead of us, visible through the pass. At the pass, instead of following
the trail down to the North Fork of the Elk River, we bushwhacked east
up along the Divide. It took about an hour to climb 1200 feet and
get out of the timber where the going got much easier. Our goal was
to stay above timberline and hike southward along the Divide towards Mt.
Zirkel. At 12,180 feet, Mt. Zirkel is the tallest mountain in the Park
Range and its northern side is too rugged and steep to hike over. About
a mile north of Mt Zirkel, we planned to hit a trail shown on the topo
map that leads down into the Fryingpan Basin on the eastern side of Mt.
Zirkel.
We
found parts of the old trail here and there, but eventually we just headed
down the steep northern slope into the basin. We hoped to pick up the trail
again in the basin, but could not find it, so we did a lot of boulder hopping
as we headed towards Red Dirt Pass (11,700') on the south side of Mt. Zirkel.
It turned out we would probably have been better off to have stayed on
the Divide for about another 1/2 mile to a nice broad saddle with a gentle
slope that drops into Fryingpan Basin. Eventually we found the main trail
to Red Dirt Pass, but near the pass, a snowfield blocked the trail.
We opted to play it safe and go around the snowfield on the left and once
we were above it, we encountered loose gravel on the steep slope.
It would have been just as easy to loose our footing here and taken a serious
slide down the hill. We finally reached the pass in late afternoon.
At this point, we were all pretty worn out after a day of cross country
travel and the tough climb back up to the Divide. At least it was
downhill to Gold Creek Lake (9600'), which we reached at 6 p.m.
We were so exhausted from the day before that we slept through the alarm
in the morning. It was a rather cool 40 degrees when we finally got up,
so we hiked to Gold Creek where we ate a quick granola breakfast on the
trail. From Gold Creek, the trail continues climbing to the Divide
at 11,000'. One would think that on the uphill climb in early August we
would have been shedding layers of clothes, but cool temperatures and strong
(30 to 50 mph) winds out of the northwest kept us cool. We did not
remove our windbreakers and wool hats all morning. Thankfully, the
wind was generally at our backs. The five-mile hike along the Divide was
all above timberline and was relatively easy with only few small hills
until the Lost Ranger Trail turnoff. Three years earlier we thought we
figured out how the trail got its name, when we spent the better part of
a day trying to find and stay on the Lost Ranger Trail. It started with
some hikers missing the Lost Ranger Trail turnoff down into Red Canyon.
Once regrouped, we found the trail covered with trees, making it extremely
difficult to follow. A windstorm had knocked down hundreds, if not thousands
of trees in the drainage and they were never cleared off the trail.
It seemed like every time we got off the trail to go around a group of
fallen trees, we could not locate the trail again. We figured the trail
was so difficult to follow that even the forest rangers got lost and that
was why trees still covered the trail.
This time we stayed on the main Wyoming Trail, which turned out to be
a harder than expected 1100' climb over Lost Ranger Peak. The scenery
was excellent as we climbed over the peak and headed along the Divide past
Mt. Ethel. Along the way, we had more uphill climbing than we expected.
We reached Lake Elbert by late afternoon, leaving some time for a little
bit of fishing and relaxing. We covered as much distance (15 miles) as
the day before, but spent 3 hours less time hiking. Nearly the whole day
was spent above treeline on or very close to the Divide without seeing
another person. So far, we had only seen a few people back by Gem
Lake and Gold Creek Lake.
At 5:45 a.m., we got up to cook freeze-dried eggs and potatoes for breakfast.
Cooking hash browns at 11,000 feet takes awhile. While waiting for
breakfast, the skies started to darken, so we rushed like mad to
get going. By the time we packed and hiked back up to the Divide,
the skies began to clear. Before long we could see Rabbit Ears Mountain
in the distance to the south. The trail continued to follow the Divide
south and eventually turned into a jeep road that headed back below timberline.
We just pounded out the miles to Buffalo Pass where it seemed as if we
were back in civilization with numerous trucks and campers around Summit
Lake. We enjoyed lunch at the picnic area near the lake where several people
were out fishing.
After lunch, we continued to follow the Wyoming Trail, which we had
been on since Gold Creek Lake, along the Divide. About a mile south
of the pass, we encountered several new access roads, a relay tower, and
a new power line, which made it difficult to stay on and relocate the Wyoming
Trail. Since the terrain was fairly open, we sort of faked it and headed
southwest back onto a jeep road. We eventually found ourselves back on
the Wyoming Trail before it headed into the timber near Grizzly Lake.
The trail remained in heavy timber and we got the lakes and ponds mixed
up along the way, thus thinking we were farther down the trail than we
really were. This made the hike through the dense forest with plenty
of dead trees blocking the trail seem endless. We eventually reached Lake
Elmo at 4:45 and made camp there, having completed 18 miles for the day.
The mosquitoes were very bad for the first time, gave us a good excuse
to head to the tent for a short afternoon nap. After supper, Jeff tried
a little fishing but did not have any luck. A man in a rubber raft
caught several trout in the middle of the lake.
From Lake Elmo, it was an easy hike on a good trail to Fishhook Lake. The
trail then paralleled Fishhook Creek and eventually climbed up a ridge
to end at a forest service road near Base Campground. The rest of the morning
was spent hiking along improved dirt roads. The scenery was
decent as we crossed plenty of open meadows and we could see Rabbit Ears
Mountain from several vantage points. We hit the highway near Rabbit Ears
Pass and took pictures with the Continental Divide sign. From there, we
walked down the highway towards Muddy Pass Lake. About a mile from the
lake, we stopped to rest in the shade of the abandoned Continental Restaurant.
Bill jokingly stuck his thumb out at the passing traffic. A truck
actually stopped and offered us a ride. We reluctantly accepted the
offer for the very short ride down to the lake. At the lake, we waited
in the hot sun to meet Diane and Donna to restock our food and get some
clean clothes. From Muddy Pass, the Divide crosses a stretch of private
land. To avoid hiking along the highway, we drove down Highway 14 to Indian
Creek and back onto Forest Service land where the whole family could camp
for the night. After crossing the Forest Service boundary, we found a nice
enough hunting camp in the trees near Indian Creek. While we set up camp,
Diane cooked us a great meal.
jbraun@mtech.edu