A Backpack Fishing Trip
We first hatched the plan a few moons back, in May I think. I had just come back from my trip to Lost Creek Wilderness and my oldest son Patrick was looking to get away from the Houston heat for awhile during the dog days of summer. He is a school teacher there and has the summer off, he stays home with Jobi and Ohlen his 6 and 3 year old sons all summer, so escaping for a few days to the high cool mountains of Colorado to chase some wild trout seemed like a pretty good idea.
So, the last week of July, Pat flew up to Denver from Houston and we headed out 285 to Conifer and then over Crow hill to Bailey, where the highway parallels the North Fork of the South Platte River for about 14 miles to Kenosha Gulch. What a beautiful little stream it is, crashing through the canyon just west of Bailey, sluicing and dancing over the boulders, then relaxing through emerald green hay meadows in a series of drops and pools that would get any fisherman’s pulse racing. I glanced over at Pat, while I was driving and saw some foam building up at the corners of his mouth with a little bead of saliva running down to his chin. Then back into a canyon again around Grant, where the Robert’s Tunnel delivers water from Dillon Reservoir to the river. Just one of dozens of Denver water projects designed to deliver the life blood to the ever burgeoning population of the mile high city. The tunnel was built in 1956 during one of the worst drought periods in Colorado history and still rates as one of the most important front range water projects. Denver is seriously not the most optimum location for a city of it’s size. Everyone loves Colorado and wants to move to Denver to enjoy the mile high lifestyle, but it is just growing too big for the local environment. To be honest it was probably too big 30 years ago when we lived here, which was the only time in Denver history that there was a decrease in the population, probably because of the lull in the energy markets, which was why I finally had to pull up stakes and move to Texas. The population then was under 500,000 people, currently there are well over 700,000 folks calling Denver home and I am glad that I am not one of them. ‘Some of you other people need to move away too, and no I don’t mean just up to Conifer or Evergreen.’
Up over Kenosha pass we went, it seems like there are always dozens of folks up on this pass, mountain biking and hiking on the Colorado Trail, which crosses the road at the top of the pass. Down the pass into South Park and through Jefferson and Como, a couple of ghost towns with some shops and a few road side attractions before getting to Fairplay. We didn’t stop, it was on over Red Hill into the the Arkansas River valley, where whitewater rafting is king during the summer, especially when there is plenty of water and this year seems to be pretty good, there are people and raft haulers everywhere as we descend into the valley, past the state prison and into Buena Vista. I liked this little burg quite a bit, back in the day and wanted to see how it was getting along, it was the last population center of any size to pick up a non-res fishing license for Pat. The little hamlet has definitely grown up and is a lot more commercialized than it was 40 years ago, but they have kept it tasteful. We made a few stops at a little outdoor shop downtown, the fly shop and the City Market, before heading south to Poncha Springs. The big detour south is to get around the Sawatch Range, the biggest, burliest mountain range in the Rocky Mountains. The range is 80 miles long and contains over a quarter of Colorado’s 14er’s. It’s anchored on the south end by the Collegiate Peaks, a grouping of 9, 14,000 foot peaks that tends to make flat-landers wet themselves. I looked over at Pat and said, “What do you think?” He looked a little pale and responded, “They’re big.”
At Poncha we turned right on highway 50, a cool transcontinental two lane highway stretching over 3000 miles across some of the most interesting country in the U.S. It is a wonderful break from the Interstate system with it’s half awake, or should I say half asleep truck drivers by the thousands aiming their massive steel rigs at that narrow space between the white lines, not to mention those wonderful chain gas stations, truck stops, fast food joints and tourist traps. ‘Slow down, explore and take Highway 50.’ The highway goes over Monarch Pass after leaving Poncha. Monarch is one of the most beautiful highway passes in the Rockies and is a fun, exhilarating three lane affair when the weather is nice, I was imagining my line on a bicycle as I weaved left, right and left again in the Jeep through the tight corners on the west side of the pass, descending into the upper reaches of the Gunnison Valley.
We dropped off the pass into Tomichi Valley and down to the small one horse town of Sargeants, where I committed the first error of the trip. While researching the trip, I noticed a little hole in the wall cafe here with pretty high ratings from previous patrons for their hamburgers, more specifically a Bacon-Brie Burger. I have an affinity, (affliction) for hole-in-the-wall cafe’s in the middle of no-where and Hamburger Exotica, so I had to stop. I had the Bacon-Brie Burger and Pat had a Elk Meatloaf sandwich, we both had fries. The mistake was not stopping here, the food was awesome. What I had underestimated was the massive physical effort it was going to take from the trail-head to the lake with backpacks that weighed as much as both of Pat’s kids. Trip Tip: Eat the big burger or pizza coming out of the mountains, not going in.
We were at the trail-head changing into boots and adjusting pack straps by about 12:30. A darker cloud came over the ridge just as we were ready to hit the trail and started spitting big fat raindrops. I looked up to assess the situation and took one right between the eyes, a teaspoon of icy cold water slammed into my forehead at over twenty MPH, with a loud splat. I said, “we can wait for a bit here, they usually blow through pretty fast.” We took off our packs but within ten minutes the sky was blue, birds singing, cicadias accompanying them and off we went up the trail, it wasn’t ten minutes until Pat asked for the first time – how far have we gone and how much further was it, just like 30 years ago, some things never change. At about the 3/4 mile point it started raining again, but harder this time, the rain changed to hail as we came out of the forest into an avalanche chute with hundreds of large pine trees tossed around like pixie sticks, up and down the ravine. So as we stood there in the midst of this massive natural destruction zone, getting slammed by hard, cold, ice, whizzing down from the heavens, Pat looks out from under his hat and asks, “how long do you think this will last?” I am pretty sure he had never in his entire life been caught a mile away from the nearest shelter in a mountain thunderstorm. I said, “they usually move through pretty fast.” It did and we were on our way pretty quickly.
We made it almost another mile up the ridge before the sky really opened up. There were some trees, but they were all smaller specimens, no old timers with long flat limbs that would provide much defense against the dime size hail. We found the best one and took refuge under it, leaving our packs on, to help defend against the hail that was pelting us. Mountain hail is meaner than flatland hail, sharper, like the ice from a snow cone machine. So as we sat hunched up in the fetal position under the middling little pine tree, I pondered error number 2 and 3 of the trip. I almost always carry a tarp when backpacking, usually right in the side pocket, so I can whip it out, in situations just like this. It was in the kit to take pile, right up until the final packing and somehow it was moved to the leave behind pile, I’ll never make that mistake again. Hiking attire was error #3, I usually change into running shorts at the trail-head when I put my boots on. They are ultralight, dry quickly, provide excellent freedom of movement and can be easily washed and dried in a stream or lake if it is a muddy run in. I was wearing an old pair of Patagonia rock shorts for the drive in, a relic of the seventies and eighties, like me. A time before high-tech super-duper fabrics, when freedom of movement was gained by shortening the inseam and increasing the circumference of the pant leg. Since these were my hiking shorts of choice back in the day, I thought what the hell, just go old school. The problem is, the boys hang a little lower these days than they did back in the eighties, gravity gets the best of us eventually I suppose, and that large leg hole doesn’t work so well when hunched up in the fetal position, drenched to the bone, being slammed by natures own snow cone machine and praying for it to please stop.
The hail and rain did stop pretty quickly in the time dimension, perhaps 5 or 10 minutes, but in the physical realm it seemed interminable. We moved pretty quickly up the slippery trail, once the rain stopped, mostly to try and warm up. By the time we hit the top of the ridge the sun was back out, the birds were singing and beads of sweat were popping out on my forehead. The ridge top was a little over half way to the lake and I had kind of planned for a pack’s off break here, as most of the uphill is done and it is a good place to cool down before the more level hike into the lake. There was also a bench mark on the top of a small hill at the end of the ridge and the old surveyor in me wanted to go have a look and see if it was still there and calibrate the altimeter in my watch. I didn’t find the B.M. But I didn’t look with much enthusiasm, I just calibrated at the high point of the rock knoll. Back near the trail there is a massive outcropping of opaque milky white quartz about the size of a Cadillac poking out of the ground. Pat is sitting on it sending a text message. He said he got a message to both our spouses that we were off into the wilds with no cell coverage beyond this point. I was a bit amazed as my phone had no service from the time we left highway 50, 15 miles back in Parlin.
With a name like Boulder Lake I should have known it would be boulder trail. On the map it looked like the trail into the lake mostly contoured the ridge before dropping down slightly into the Boulder Lake bowl at 11,400’ elevation. I thought, piece of cake when I was doing the map scout, should be able to average 3 MPH. It turned out to be a series of switchbacks over gnarly boulder strewn trail before dropping steeply into the Boulder drainage and then climbing steeply back up several switchbacks to the Lake. It was also a good bit further than my mileage estimation, error #4 I suppose. We were fully and completely thrashed by the time we came over the last rise where we got our first view of the lake. It is a beautiful gem of a lake nestled into the compact bowl, shining sapphire blue in the deeper sections and emerald green near shore.
I let out a rebel yell to see what kind of echo the bowl was capable of producing and was well satisfied with the prodigious, returned yell. At the bottom of the hill, where the little stream made it’s way out of the beaver dam, that guarded the south end of the lake we came to Pat’s nemesis for the trip. There was a tricky crossing over the creek, which was a series of deep pot holes with as much mud and silt as water. You had to cross the deepest section first on a good size log, then jump down onto a large granite rock and pirouette onto a smaller log over a mostly mud section. Pat says, “man, I feel like I’m on American Ninja Warriors, Mountain Man Edition.” He went on across first though and made it look pretty easy, I was still a bit over cautious, using my hiking sticks to full advantage. We would cross it numerous times over the next few days while fishing the lake and it got a lot easier. After getting across the obstacle we worked our way down the shoreline on a faint trail to about the midway point of the lake. I told Pat to take a break while I do a quick recon to locate the site.
One thing I have learned is that, if there is a water source and a flat spot there will likely be a decent site already situated with a fire pit and good spots clear of underbrush for sitting a tent. The map scout showed the most logical location to be on top of a small hill to the southeast of the lake, so that’s where I headed. It didn’t take long to find the spot, it was right where I expected it to be from the map. I was confident it was the best spot anywhere in the bowl and yelled down to Pat that I had found home for the next few days. It was a beautiful spot with one big grandfather tree close in and a few more remarkable specimens a little ways down the hill, there was a view off the back of the hill all the way down to Cochetopa Dome and even the La Garita Mountains, 50 miles away to the southwest. The one downside, it was about 120 yards and seventy vertical feet to the primary water source; Boulder Lake. We would climb this hill numerous times during our stay to get water and go fishing and it never failed to get the heart racing.
No sooner than we dropped the packs in camp, Pat is ready to rig up the rods, head back down to the lake and chase some of those wild trout I had been telling him stories about. I suggested we get camp setup just in case we got another thunderstorm, he understood completely, the memory of nature’s own snow cone machine fresh in his head. We had camp set pretty well by 4:30 – 5:00, so we rigged the rods, grabbed the water filter and bag then headed down the hill to the lake. I had issues with line twist right off, throwing a nasty little bird’s nest, which took several minutes to clear up. Pat didn’t have any problems though, he hooked up on his first cast to a nice double digit Brook trout. I think he had caught at least 5 before I caught my first one. Pat likes to keep count and we have always been competitive when fishing together, he was up big early, so he figured he should offer his old man some advice, so he began giving me a running commentary on each fish, sink rates, speed of retrieve and depth of the take. I asked him what he was using and he said a silver blade Blue Fox spinner. I had been slinging a brass bladed Panther Martin inline spinner, one of my favorites, but decided a silver blade would be a better choice. I found a semi dry spot on the lake shore to sit down and change out lures. I was surrounded by wild flowers, listening to the splish, splash sound of Pat reeling in another Brook trout, what a glorious place, I nearly cried, must be the increased estrogen levels that happens with older men.
It was time to put the secret weapon to work. On my last backpack adventure I walked around camp barefoot quite a bit, because my feet hurt and the forest duff was nice and soft. So as I was pondering the lightest and most packable camp shoe, the idea came to me to use a light weight, stretchy water shoe, like they wear at water parks. I found a pair on Amazon for a few dollars, I had put them on in camp and judging by the way they handled coming down the steep little hill they were going to serve their purpose quite well. I waded out into the water on the shallow bench, getting a much better casting angle beyond the bank-side trees. I cast the new spinner bait out to the edge of the drop off and immediately hooked up with the largest fish of the evening, a scrappy Brook trout, just over a foot long. We both continued to catch fish and rib each other as I slowly narrowed the gap. The score was somewhere around 15-12, we lost count, as we listened to the far off thunder get closer. When we could see distant lightning over the ridge at the top of the bowl we decided to pull the plug and head for camp. I stayed at the lake to filter a gallon of water and Pat went up the hill to secure the wood pile against the coming storm. The fat raindrops caromed off my hat and shoulders as I pumped the water filter furiously trying to fill up the water bag. I got about 3/4 of a gallon and then hurriedly put the filter away and raced the rain up the hill. We made a beeline for the tent, getting boots, bags and other assorted paraphernalia inside the double vestibules of the Hubba Hubba. I have had this tent for a number of years but had not ever used it in inclement weather. It’s a keeper, performing flawlessly for the entire trip, weathering multiple rain showers and the vestibules are plenty large enough for two people’s gear.
We moved bags and gear around, clearing a space to play cribbage as we munched homemade trail mix and jerky, while listening to the symphony of the thunderstorm closing in on us, the steady beat of the rain on the tent fly. I took the first game of cribbage handily as luck would have it, with good hands, good cribs and easy pegging, Pat just barely made it beyond the skunk hole as I coasted to the final point. All the while the storm outside is crashing and booming, it started hailing and you could see the ice pellets accumulating on the ground just past the bottom of the vestibule flaps, about the size of peas, but harder and sharper. The second game was almost the exact opposite, with Pat getting all of the breaks. It was getting uncomfortable trying to sit up in the confines of the tent and we tried playing while laying down, sort of flipping our cards towards the board as we pegged and counted our way around. The altitude and gastronomic distress started kicking in, I was feeling light-headed, clammy, queasy and a throbbing headache had kicked in, behind my left ear. I got into the first aid kit for some Advil and took a couple, in retrospect I should have taken twice the dosage, it didn’t really help much. We finished the game, Pat thumping me pretty good, even counting points I had missed in my own hand. I tried to get him to let me have them, blaming the altitude for my ineptitude, but he was thinking about me counting all those points when he was a kid, there was no way he was giving me those points. At 11,500’ elevation it is about 35% less efficient to collect oxygen than at sea level and 20% less efficient than at 4300’ elevation where I live on the high plains, so the excuse didn’t fly. We laid on the sleeping pads at opposite ends of the tent talking for awhile when we finished the game, as we listened to the thunderstorm, move out of the area and the rain drumming on the tent fly began to slow.
The rain finally stopped and we backed out of the tent to a cool wet forest, the sun had already dropped below Fossil Ridge, though we would have light for another hour or so. We started the stoves and I made a cup of herbal tea. While Pat was heating up some water I messed around and got a fire started, with the wood he had gathered earlier. The wood was damp, it popped and smoked quite a bit and seemed to mirror my lethargic state of mind, no joy in Mudville. I fired up the Jetboil and made a pack of Ramen noodles with a package of tuna added for protein, but couldn’t stomach more than a couple bites. I walked about fifty yards around the hill and threw it out on the ground. We stayed up until dark and watched the full moon rise over the east ridge and then hit the sacks.
We were up, coffee’d, rigged and headed for the lake by 6:30 the next morning. It was cool, with turquoise blue skies. Sweaters, jackets and stocking caps were in order, I even had my wool fingerless gloves on, at least until the first fish. Pat started hooking up right away in the shallow cove at the southeast end of the lake. It looked really shallow in the ultra clear water but was likely 4-5 feet deep. You could clearly see the fish swimming around and it was fun to watch them lock on to your lure, follow for awhile and then slam into it with a slashing, predatory attack, designed to maim or kill it’s prey. Pat took the early lead, but I was in no hurry, laying back and shooting some pictures of the wildflowers around the lake and the sunlight illuminating the far ridge.
The plan was to walk all the way around the lake and we proceeded in a counter clockwise direction. The fishing just kept getting better as we methodically worked the shoreline around to the north side of the lake. Pat kept saying, “I know the bigger ones are over here in the deeper water.” He had caught over thirty fish since getting to the lake, and the 8 to 12 inch fish he was catching had become mundane, he wanted a big one. His mind went to the stories I had told him about 18 inch cutthroats that rip line off your reel, drag screaming, before changing course and shooting to the surface, jumping and twisting like a circus acrobat. He asked, “You think there are any cutthroats in here?” I said, “Maybe, but it’s not very likely since we have caught over 50 fish and not one cut.” I watched him as he stalked the fish from the shoreline, trying different retrieves, letting it sink a little longer after the cast before beginning the retrieve and we kept catching brook trout after brook trout as we worked around to the boulder slide area on the north side of the lake. I switched to a medium size spoon when we started fishing the deeper water along the north end of the lake, it seemed to perform about the same as the spinner, the fish were all about the same size we had been catching. We continued working across the boulder slide and on the other side of it I caught the largest fish of the trip, a fat 13” Brook trout, that slashed the spoon on the drop, I could almost see him do it, 30’ away and 6’ down.
As we got to the west end of the lake, the sun popped up over the ridge and warmed everything up. I took my sweater off and tied it around my waist. Pat did the same with his jacket. The fishing slowed considerably, we were still catching a few, but it was getting pretty slow. We were both pretty close to 20 fish each before we lost interest in counting. I was hungry so we picked up the pace a bit, walking more and casting less. The west side was also loaded with brush, the only open casting lanes were where the beaver come to shore, they make a nice, open, deep trail to retrieve the lure back through. Just as Pat was about to make a cast the local resident engineer himself pokes his head above the water and starts swimming towards the dam. “Dad, Dad! What is it?” Then he realizes, before I can answer. “It’s a beaver, I have never seen a real beaver in the wild before, that’s so cool.” It was pretty cool, my 33 year old son as excited as Jobi, his six year old about seeing a wild beaver. Something about wild beaver, I suppose.
We worked around and crossed the American Ninja obstacle below the beaver dam, down the south shore and back up the hill to camp. We figured we were close to 70 trout between the two of us for the trip. Back in camp, I put water on for tea and tracked down the toilet kit, I knew it wouldn’t be long and hopefully the end of my gastronomic distress. The key to taking a crap in the woods, is don’t wait too long. It’s all about finding the perfect spot and getting everything ready. You want to wait until you build up just the right amount of pressure to perform your business quickly, but if you wait until too much pressure builds up, you move into dangerous projectile mode and that is no place to be. I had a spot picked out around the hill and moseyed off that direction after I finished my tea.
When I got back to camp, Pat was stretched out in the hammock, he said he had a pretty bad headache, his Flat-lander Fever coming on a little later than mine. I was feeling pretty good and brewed another cup of tea. I had been pondering an idea on how to improve the efficiency of the fire pit, so I roamed around the top of the hill picking up some stray rocks and took them over to the fire area. My idea was to add a hole or tunnel on the low side of the fire pit, which is also the predominant wind direction and create a venturi tunnel. The heat rises from the fire, drawing fresh oxygen through the constricted tunnel, creating a more efficient, and hotter burn. I also built a little alcove at the other end of the pit, to move hot coals into for cooking tin foil trout. I brought enough foil to wrap four good size Brookies to roast in the fire, so that was the plan for the evening chase. I went out with the saw, cut three or four logs, brought them back and split them with the hatchet. When Pat was feeling better he went out and collected some more. After lunch we went for a walk around the hill and down into the saddle to the southeast, we were scouting for a possible bushwhack down a different drainage that might cut off a 1/2 mile or so on the hike out, but it didn’t pan out. As we made our way back to camp the clouds moved in and the ever so present, splat, splat, splat of the large mountain raindrops meeting terra firma began popping out the rhythm and the distant thunder added a baseline. Pat smirked and said, “I guess it’s time to play some cribbage.” We picked up the pace, getting back to camp and moving anything that would melt up under the tent vestibules. I moved our significant wood pile into the makeshift wood shed Pat had designed up under the stack of logs in the fire area. We made it into the tent just as a powerful blast of thunder rocked the hilltop and the splats turned into a roar of massive raindrops, slamming the ripstop nylon. We relaxed for awhile, I lay back into the fluffy mounds of my down sleeping bag and listened to the summer storm roll through. It wasn’t long before the hail started, a different sound, when it ricocheted off the taut nylon. The hail is bigger, the terminal velocity higher, so it is going quite a bit faster, hitting with more kinetic energy, more like a drum beat. We munched gorp and jerky, trying to record the thunder on our cell phones. We never did play cribbage, we were too tired, just lay back and watched the hail turn the ground white, out beyond the bottom of the vestibule flaps.
It finally stopped raining, like it always does and we backed out of the tent onto the wet forest duff, the hail was rapidly melting and there was a cool, damp rain forest feel. I put some water on for another cup of tea and Pat did the same, he had coffee, trying to cure his headache from caffeine withdrawals, having gone longer than usual without a Coke. We strolled around the camp site, drinking our beverages as all of the sitting places were wet. We headed down to the lake at around 4:00, it looked like the rain was done, so we were going to work down around the cove and then on the way back, gut four of the fat little beauties and seal them in the foil pouch to roast on the fire once we got a good bed of coals going. We were catching fish pretty consistently as we worked down to the cove, a couple of them the perfect size for roasting, but we kept working our way down the shoreline, leap frogging each other. At the same time, we look up at each other feeling the temperature drop several degrees, then the distant thunder. “Let’s start working back and keep the next four decent fish”, Pat said. I agreed and we started working our way back down the shoreline, but from the minute Pat uttered those fateful words we didn’t have another hit the rest of the way and of course then it started raining again and we headed up the hill to the tent. It was like Groundhog Day, the same scene playing out over and over again. We went 1-1 again on the cribbage board and the tent was more claustrophobic than before, there was an odor permeating through the tent from the dampness and the 400 pounds of dirty, sweaty, wet, man meat, not to mention the fishy smell from releasing close to a hundred brook trout.
The rain moved through pretty quickly in the time dimension, like it always does and we were back out of the tent just as the sun set over Fossil Ridge. We pulled back the curved planks that Pat had fashioned to protect the fire wood and it was all pretty dry, time to test out the rebuilt fire pit. I grabbed a good number of the smaller kindling size pieces and Pat went looking for some tinder. It was tough getting the wet tinder going and I got into the survival kit for a small piece of fire starter, might as well use it, if you need it. It worked beautifully and within minutes we were feeding good sized pieces of kindling into the blaze. I made a cup of tea and noticed my supply had dwindled pretty fast, must have drank more with all the cold damp weather. We kept feeding the fire as we prepared our dinner, my appetite was much better this evening and I made fast work of dinner and brewed another cup of tea. We sat by the fire, sipped tea and discussed our plan, the original plan was to go over Fossil Ridge into the Crystal Creek drainage and fish Crystal Lake, but Pat had developed some pretty mean blisters just above both heels. He had put a second skin on both of them after getting here, but they were still giving him some grief, so he really didn’t feel like packing any further in. He said he would like to have a go at some stream fishing and I responded that I had brought spinning rods, instead of fly rods, because I thought we would be fishing lakes. We considered going around through Gunnison to Taylor River and I suggested we go down south and check out Cochetopa Creek, I had read a number of articles about the quality of fishing but had never fished it and would like to check it out. If it didn’t work out and looked like it was just going to rain some more, we could loop around through the San Luis valley and still get to Denver before dark, otherwise we could camp at Dome Lakes or up in the Forest if the fishing was good. Pat agreed and we sat by the fire until we had burned through all the wood and the moon came up over the ridge, discussing a strategy for fishing Cochetopa Creek with the spinning rods.
I slept better on Friday night and was feeling pretty good Saturday morning when we crawled out of the tent. I knew the hike was mostly down hill and it was another beautiful mountain morning. We had a cup of coffee and ate breakfast as we waited for the sun to come up. Pat wanted fire again, he was cold. I’d loaned him my decade old North Face bag, rated for 35 degrees, but considering it’s years of service, 45 degrees is about as good as it gets and that is about where it made it to last night. He went out and cut a few good size logs, split them with the hatchet and started a fire, while I started moving sleeping pads and bags out of the tent to air out before packing them in their tight little compression sacks. Pat helped me fold up the tent and we were pretty much packed up and ready to go, by the time the sun came up over the ridge. We hoisted the packs and headed down the steep little hill and then over the log, rock, log crossing for the last time. Pat went first and I handed him my rod when I got to the rock before I made my way over the deep section for the last time, It’s different with all the weight and I wanted to be able to use my sticks if I needed to. We parked our packs under a tree and spent an hour or so casting along the south west shoreline, beaver country, lots of low shrub in close to the lake. It is hard to fish, but it is where we caught the largest fish of the trip, we gave it a pretty good go, but we were definitely not as energetic about it as when we first came over the ridge and seen the lake a few days ago. We packed up the rods, tightened up all the compression straps on our backpacks and headed down the switchbacks, towards the Jeep and civilization. I lead the way as we left the lake, I felt strong and it felt good to take the long strides, going down the hill through the switchbacks, swinging the sticks to keep the rhythm. The trail seemed steeper going down, than it was coming up, but it seemed friendlier, happier, the boulders not so big.
We were making excellent time down the trail and Pat commented on the Herculean effort that we had put out a few days ago to get up the steep sections we were now going down on. I stopped to take a picture and let Pat by, to start working his way up the last uphill section to the end of the ridge with the Cadillac Quartz outcrop. I heard some voices, so I put the camera away and clambered up the trail, where Pat was greeting a couple with day packs. They were in pretty good shape, but they had to be somewhere in their late 60’s or 70’s. They had high tech fabrics and worn boots, you could tell that they get out a bit. He had little round wire rim glasses and she had her grey hair tied in a bun on top of her head. They looked like a couple of retired college professors, Geologist and Paleontologist I was guessing. We talked briefly, they said they were headed up to Fossil Ridge. We wished them a pleasant day, warned them about the thunderstorms every afternoon and headed up the trail. Once we were out of earshot, I started laughing, “Yeah aren’t we the studs. A couple of 80 year old geriatrics are dancing circles around us, climbing over the ridge for their morning hike, we can’t even get there in three days”. Pat was silent for awhile and then blurts, “Our packs are a lot heavier than theirs”. I just smiled and trudged up the hill, my heart rate increasing with the ascent. We stopped at Cadillac Quartz Knob and Pat tried playing with his cell phone again, but it didn’t work this time, so we were on our way pretty quickly. Just as we went around the corner to the last downhill stretch, a couple of college students came up the trail, they were fit, if a bit pale, faces red and flush, breathing hard from the effort of ascending the long steep ridge. We greeted them briefly, warned them about the afternoon storms, wished them well and were on our way down the final pitch. Pat says, “See, they were breathing hard”. “Indeed they were”, I responded.
As we came down the final steep pitch before opening up into Gold Creek Campground, I hear the muffled sounds of a couple motocross bikes working their way up the trail, I tap Pat’s shoulder and we move to the high side of the trail and wait for them. The first guy comes by, outfitted in a colorful red and white leather full body suit with boots all the way to his knees, buckles everywhere. He is in his late sixties I think, at least he looks older than me. He says thank you and that there is another bike behind him, so we wait and his buddy comes by standing on the pegs, in the lowest gear, the powerful bike and rider ready to scramble over the boulders, around the switchbacks and up the steeps. He says, “last one”. We could pretty much tell that, but it was nice that they were so courteous. The bikes are probably one of the reasons the trails are so rocky here, as they tend to shred a lot of the top soil with the big knobby tires, leaving the heavy rubble behind. I like motorcycles, but I’m not interested in the trail riding thing. Everyone I know who does it has broken a leg, an arm, a collarbone or poked a dull peg through their calf. None of that sounds like fun to me, but there must be something to it, because they go right back out again once they heal up. As we drop into the campground a string of a dozen four wheelers come down the Gold Creek road, in single file, with little coolers, fishing rods and other assorted paraphernalia bungie corded to the racks. The campground and the parking lot were pretty much full, it was a Saturday at the end of July, in Colorful Colorado, the outdoor recreation empire. I prefer coming out of the mountains on the weekend to going in, but that’s another story.
We threw the packs in back of the Jeep, I changed into my Tevas and we headed down the mountain, stopping a few times for pictures of some of the old cabins and mine ruins in the Gold Creek Canyon. The little general store was closed down in Ohio City with a For Sale sign on the front, too far off the beaten track, I suppose. We stopped by the General Store / Post Office in Parlin to see about getting some water but they were not open for business either. We debated briefly on going on up 50 to Gunnison, but stuck to the plan and headed south on 114 through Cochetopa Canyon. It was pretty country, open park land, cows with their calves dotting the landscape and Cochetopa Creek winding through the bottom, seemingly tying itself in knots as it wandered one way than the other through the green meadows. We stopped at a few places and had a look at the stream, it was pretty small and not as deep as I had expected. The bottom was lined with moss and algae, the edges along the undercut banks thick with willows and brush. It was obvious that it was going to be difficult to fish with the spinning gear and the fish were not likely to be very big. We continued on to the State Wildlife Area and pulled off at a spot with a few picnic tables and a pit toilet and fished for an hour or so, I had one take in a little pool below a riffle where I could get a good cast, but that was it and then it started raining again, imagine that, so we moved down to the meadow section near the Dome Lakes. I caught one little scrappy fish here, but we were cleaning green crud off our lures on almost every cast and dodging the numerous cow pies, our enthusiasm was waning.
We decided to head on back to Denver, which was probably in the back of our minds the entire trip, Pat hadn’t been up to see his Grandma for a few years, life gets pretty busy when you are raising two boys, I know, I remember. So being able to spend a whole day with her seemed a lot better than just a short evening and my oldest brothers son and his son, the Troy’s had taken the Amtrak out from the flatland, black dirt, corn capital of the world and land of Lincoln, as well as the place of my birth – Illinois, for a week of vacation in Colorful Colorado. So I got the Jeep back on hard pavement and and we headed over Cochetopa Pass and into the north end of the San Luis Valley, the land of my Grandmother. This was the place that I first got the bug. When I was young we would trek out to Colorado from Illinois every other summer or so and visit the relatives down in the south end of the valley, Del Norte, Monte Vista and Center. The family had an old mining lease in-holding in the National Forest, southwest of the valley. It was almost impossible to get there by vehicle, 4×4 required. There were two or three cabins there, built close to a hundred years ago when my great great uncle or whoever first staked his claim, ‘Dream Mine’. Nothing ever came of the mining for him but the name stuck and the property became known as Dream Ranch. The ranch had been willed through a couple generations to the kids of the kids and so on, so technically I owned a piece of it at some point in the future, but alas everyone got together when I was in my late teens and sold the ranch off, during one of those mountain land booms. It was my first real taste of the high country at an important age in my life, I was right around puberty one year when we went up to the ranch, got dropped off and stayed for a week. There was a good sized stream that ran through the property and the National Forest above, it was a series of beaver ponds all the way up the drainage for a mile behind the cabins, where I chased wild trout with my Dad’s old fiberglass spinning rod, a wet fly and a pinch-on piece of lead. If that wasn’t enough, right in the basin where the cabins were, there was also a dam built by human beavers, the lake behind it full of stocked rainbow trout. We would go down two times a day and throw out Purina Trout pellets for them and watch them roll on the surface, gorging on the fish food. I learned a trick from my Uncle here that I still use on hatchery fish, he had tied a fly that looked just like a Purina Fish Pellet using elk hair, sort of like a Humpy. Hatchery or pet fish like this get conditioned to the sound and look of the fish pellets and just can’t resist, when it lands near by, sort of like me and craft beer. The trip almost ended in disaster, when my little sister’s appendix went whacko and we got her off the mountain and to the hospital just in time for a visiting, on vacation, brain surgeon, to give her an emergency appendectomy, in the nick of time, just before it burst. I think that trip scared mom and I don’t remember ever going back up to the ranch like that again. But I was hooked, trout fishing and the high mountains of Colorado had touched me and I knew that I could not stay away from them for too long at a time.
We stopped at a convenience store in Saguache at the bottom of the pass, something to drink and on towards Poncha Pass. At Poncha we were back on the road we came in on but going the other direction up the Arkansas Valley, but there are a lot more cars on it today. We discuss the possibility of hitting one of the access points on the Arkansas and decide on Fisherman’s Bridge where the river is pretty close to the highway. I pull off the highway at the turnoff and ease past a raft livery and a little river side bar and across the bridge toward the recreation site turnoff. The parking lot seems pretty full, and while crossing the bridge, we see a guy in the middle of the river, no shirt, beer in one hand, rod in the other and a cigarette dangling from his lips sort of slow waltzing across the river, back and shoulders bright red, from the intense high altitude sun burn. Pat looks over at me with that are you kidding me look and I just drive on, weekend river traffic in Colorful Colorado.
We drive straight through on the winding 285, back past the Platte, but the fishing is all private leases, so we drive on, arriving in Englewood in the late afternoon. I let Pat shower first while I sorted some gear. After I showered, Pat tried to talk me in to going out for something to eat, but I was tired, really didn’t want to drive anywhere and mom already had some chicken tortellini soup on the stove, that was smelling pretty good to me. So we just relaxed and talked to mom. The Troy’s came in a little later, they had tried to go over to the Arapahoe County Fair to see the rodeo with Glen, my brother in law, but got rained out, imagine that. We talked for awhile, catching up, but it had been a long day for everyone and so we went to bed early. I slept like a log until about 2:30 when I hear a noise, as I come groggily awake I hear my mom say, “come and look at this and see if you can figure out what’s going on. I stumble out into the front room and see the red and blues out the window. There was a little white car, high centered in the next door neighbors front yard, her white picket fence shattered into little pieces, laying about like kindling, five police cars parked sideways in the street. “Looks like the bars are closed,” I said and stumbled back to the bedroom, I was tired. I went over and helped Rachel, the neighbor clean it up the next morning. Patrick and the Troys, slept right through it all.
The next morning I took my coffee out on the back patio and unloaded both packs, sorting all the gear and throwing the bags, pads and stuff over the clothes line to air out. Since we were in town and the Troys were in town we decided to get the rest of the Denver family together for an evening cook out. Troy came out and asked about the gear and the trip, I could see that he was already getting the bug and he had only been here two days. They were off to Rocky Mountain National park and a cabin they had rented for a night, up by Grand Lake on Monday, I told him after visiting that country, the bug would definitely get worse. Pat and mom came up with a pretty solid meal of green chile sliders, a cheesy pasta bake, beans and a salad. The weather stayed good and we ate outside, chatting and telling stories, watching cousins who only see each other every half dozen years or so, play in the yard, building roly-poly kingdoms in the flower bed. It was fun having that much family in one place, it has not happened very often in the past 40 years or so, I know my mom misses it. Back in the day we would celebrate every special occasion with the gathering of the clan. But our generation was one of mobility and we scattered with the winds, I can count the times we have all been together in the last forty years on one hand.
Pat and I were up and out the door at 3 AM on Monday morning, the joys of cheap air fare. We made some tentative plans for another father-son summertime adventure for about the same time next year, but left it open on both ends, knowing plans need to be pliant, not concrete. We hugged, he jumped out of the Jeep with his minuscule daypack, that was stuffed exactly to within a 1/16” in all 3 dimensions to fit within the cheap seat requirement, a 1/16” over and you have to pay the over-sized luggage fee, which is twice what you paid for the ticket. I drove around the loop and out away from the airport, not headed back to town, but east toward the high plains.
The adventure was over and it was time to go home, my heart was as glad about that, as it was when we left Denver for the mountains. Every Adventurer needs a base, a place to recharge batteries and plan the next adventure or conquest, a place where you can feel a little more rooted, that place for me is the High Plains. Like everything in nature our lives are not linear, you cannot measure them in miles in, or elevation gained. Life is more like a spiral, constantly venturing or adventuring out and then looping back to assimilate the experience, sometimes on a higher plane, (High Plains) sometimes lower, sometimes the spiral is being constricted and other times it expands in an ever widening Golden Spiral, sometimes a vortex, like flushing a toilet. I was ready to be home to the little cottage, with my beautiful wife and the dogs, wandering around the yard smelling the flowers and harvesting the garden – planning the next adventure. As I topped Firstview ridge, I could see my little Emerald City, shining on the horizon in the early morning light, home sweet home and not too far from where Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz, hail from. I pushed the replay button on the song playing in the Jeep, that seemed to fit my state of mind. From this place, this base, this oasis on the High Plains, I will paint my masterpiece.
Bobby, doing his version, there on the audio file.