sort-of-annual weminuche hike
Aug. 22nd, 2022 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaFor many years now we've been (usually) going on a backpack trip in our nearby wilderness area, the Weminuche, with a group of friends that varies from year to year around the same core. This year we planned a trip to Sunlight Basin, which Britt and I last hiked to in 2004 with our friends Rolfe and Kristen as part of an epic backpack on what is now called the "Kodiak High Route" (stupid name, Kodiak, in Colorado??). Many things had changed since then: a snowslide destroyed the third bridge on Vallecito Creek (the "Swinging Bridge") a few years later, and the Forest Service being allocated less money for trail maintenance meant that the old pack trail up Sunlight Creek - already starting to decline when we hiked it in 2004 - was completely abandoned and mostly replaced by use-trails following the most direct way (rather than the easiest way), with many fallen trees to climb over or go around.
It was a multi-generational group, with my husband Britt the oldest at 68, Shan's son Anish at 23, and the rest of us scattered in between. We set out on Sunday morning and after half an hour or so, crossed the wilderness boundary:
The Vallecito trail was nicely maintained:
Michael's wife Jenny, and Mandy (who came on last year's hike) had to work, but they came with us as far as the crossing where the Swinging Bridge used to be, about 7.5 miles up from the trailhead. This is why we had to schedule the hike in August; it's impassable with the spring run-off! (And very, very cold, no matter when...)
We hiked another three miles before setting up camp. We were all getting tired, and the weather was threatening...but we managed to get our tents up before it started raining, hooray! It cleared up enough so we could sit around together and have a cocktail hour and then make dinner, but we all crawled in pretty early.
The next morning we hiked a couple of miles to where we needed to cross the river again, though fortunately we'd passed (and had to cross, ugh) several side streams and so it wasn't quite as deep. However, then we had to fight our way up Sunlight Creek through the extremely overgrown sort-of-trail, which was difficult and exhausting. (Yes, that is me!)
Of course, even when we found actual trail it climbed pretty quickly, so we had to stop a lot to look at the view. (Here is my Strava track, overlaid on the topo map.) Fortunately, the view was pretty good. (The dead trees are because of bark beetles, which are unfortunately proliferating in Colorado due to climate change. Warmer winters don't kill off the beetles as they should, and drought makes it harder for trees to exude sap to protect themselves. It's a bummer.)
Finally we climbed high enough to see Jagged Mountain (13,824') which Britt and I climbed on that 2004 trip. (The route begins in the basin on the other side, it doesn't go up those cliffs - though it is a technical route, only 5.4 or so, but very very exposed with a lot of unprotectable scary moves.) The detached spire on the right is called Lost Goat Spire - there are mountain goats in this basin as well as in Jagged Basin - and really, The Lost Goat Route would have been a much better name for the "Kodiak High Route" which goes diagonally around the east (right) shoulder of Jagged and to the basin beyond.
And then, after 7.3 miles which took us longer than the previous day's 10.7, we arrived at our destination: Sunlight Lake, at 12,040'. We'd camped here on that previous trip, and knew just how lovely it was. We'd be here for three nights and two days, relaxing, doing short hikes, and fishing. (Well, Britt would be fishing.) Looking across the lake to where we'd come from, the setting sun illuminating the clouds to the east, was gorgeous.
Here's a panorama looking west at more of the lake, taken the next morning - Michael's tent is on the far left, ours is behind me.
The next day we split up to do our own things. Britt wanted to check out four small unnamed lakes above and to the northwest of Sunlight Lake; unlike the peakbaggers, who try to climb as many of Colorado's highest peaks as they can, he considers himself a "lakebagger". (The Strava track shows our route superimposed on the topo map. The biggest lake, where we started and finished, is Sunlight Lake, where we camped.) It was a beautiful day, and the lakes were gorgeous.
That last photo is Sunlight Lake from above; we hiked down to its western end and Britt, who had brought his fishing rod and fished in the two higher lakes that looked like they had some fish in them, fished his way back to our camp. (He was doing all catch and release except for here, where he caught a few fish and we cooked them and shared them out along with mushrooms the group had picked along the way - yum!)
Speaking of eating the bounty of the land, we really timed it right for the berries. Along the way up (and also down), we found and ate, roughly in order of altitude although of course their ranges overlap: thimbleberries, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, and best of all, huckleberries! Not that huckleberries are my favorites - I think wild strawberries are better - but we hadn't seen huckleberries in the high country for literally a decade or more, so it was great to be able to pick and eat them as we hiked. (In other words, snackpacking!)
We also saw a lot of wildflowers. Here are some columbine (at the unnamed lake above Sunlight), yellow monkeyflower (at Upper Sunlight Lake), and fireweed (along the Sunlight Creek route):
The next day, Shan joined Britt and me for a hike to the high lake at the head of Grizzly Gulch (Strava track on the topo map), which we'd looked up on our first day, but which is too rugged to ascend (and has no trail). First we went around the east end of Sunlight Lake, and then scrambled/hiked up to Upper Sunlight Lake, at 12,500'. There used to be a horse trail to it - it was Britt's late father's favorite ride - but there's no sign of the trail now. It's a lovely lake, though.
Climbing above it was 4th class, working our way up the rocks and talus. At one point I took my pack off to get something, and maybe a hundred vertical feet later I realized that my camera case, which slides around the waist belt, had come off. Fortunately Britt loves me and hiked back down to retrieve it; I actually spotted it (eagle eyes - with my glasses, anyway) and guided him to it. I owed him lots of back-scratches after that! I was having a hard time with the altitude but managed to persevere to the high lakes at 13,100.
From the edge of the high lakes we could look down into Grizzly Gulch, and the lakes below which looked impossible to get to from either above or below, but very pretty.
After a snack, it was time to head back down to Upper Sunlight Lake, which was very pretty in the afternoon light.
Tough to descend to, though! Britt fished along it and Shan and I hiked along it. And then we had to make our way back to Sunlight Lake, and our Camp, and...maybe we got off track and went down the wrong chutes.
But we made it back to camp!
The next morning, one of the local mountain goats visited us. We knew there must be some around, because we saw their wool caught in the branches.
The hike down Sunlight was almost as tough as the hike up, but at least we were going downhill! As we did on the way up, we ate lots of berries. We hiked past where we'd camped on the way in, but not much farther, as the afternoon thunderstorms hit early and we got caught in a hail storm - ouch, being pelted by hail is no fun! But we set up our tents and also our kite tarp (which you can see in some of the photos above as well) so that we could eat dinner in relative comfort. You'll notice a large number of chanterelles in the frying pan - we found a lot of them on the trail today!
And then it was time to hike the rest of the way out. Back across the river (brr) at the site of the old bridge, and then down the trail, moving rather fast as we were all dreaming of the hamburgers and beer we'd have at the Weminuche Grill near Vallecito Lake! Which tasted very good and was a fitting end to our wonderful trip.
The album of photos at Flickr, few captions, no blah blah
ETA: Shan made a video of this trip, and it's on YouTube! It's a combination of video he took and photos we all shared.
It was a multi-generational group, with my husband Britt the oldest at 68, Shan's son Anish at 23, and the rest of us scattered in between. We set out on Sunday morning and after half an hour or so, crossed the wilderness boundary:
The Vallecito trail was nicely maintained:
Michael's wife Jenny, and Mandy (who came on last year's hike) had to work, but they came with us as far as the crossing where the Swinging Bridge used to be, about 7.5 miles up from the trailhead. This is why we had to schedule the hike in August; it's impassable with the spring run-off! (And very, very cold, no matter when...)
We hiked another three miles before setting up camp. We were all getting tired, and the weather was threatening...but we managed to get our tents up before it started raining, hooray! It cleared up enough so we could sit around together and have a cocktail hour and then make dinner, but we all crawled in pretty early.
The next morning we hiked a couple of miles to where we needed to cross the river again, though fortunately we'd passed (and had to cross, ugh) several side streams and so it wasn't quite as deep. However, then we had to fight our way up Sunlight Creek through the extremely overgrown sort-of-trail, which was difficult and exhausting. (Yes, that is me!)
Of course, even when we found actual trail it climbed pretty quickly, so we had to stop a lot to look at the view. (Here is my Strava track, overlaid on the topo map.) Fortunately, the view was pretty good. (The dead trees are because of bark beetles, which are unfortunately proliferating in Colorado due to climate change. Warmer winters don't kill off the beetles as they should, and drought makes it harder for trees to exude sap to protect themselves. It's a bummer.)
Finally we climbed high enough to see Jagged Mountain (13,824') which Britt and I climbed on that 2004 trip. (The route begins in the basin on the other side, it doesn't go up those cliffs - though it is a technical route, only 5.4 or so, but very very exposed with a lot of unprotectable scary moves.) The detached spire on the right is called Lost Goat Spire - there are mountain goats in this basin as well as in Jagged Basin - and really, The Lost Goat Route would have been a much better name for the "Kodiak High Route" which goes diagonally around the east (right) shoulder of Jagged and to the basin beyond.
And then, after 7.3 miles which took us longer than the previous day's 10.7, we arrived at our destination: Sunlight Lake, at 12,040'. We'd camped here on that previous trip, and knew just how lovely it was. We'd be here for three nights and two days, relaxing, doing short hikes, and fishing. (Well, Britt would be fishing.) Looking across the lake to where we'd come from, the setting sun illuminating the clouds to the east, was gorgeous.
Here's a panorama looking west at more of the lake, taken the next morning - Michael's tent is on the far left, ours is behind me.
The next day we split up to do our own things. Britt wanted to check out four small unnamed lakes above and to the northwest of Sunlight Lake; unlike the peakbaggers, who try to climb as many of Colorado's highest peaks as they can, he considers himself a "lakebagger". (The Strava track shows our route superimposed on the topo map. The biggest lake, where we started and finished, is Sunlight Lake, where we camped.) It was a beautiful day, and the lakes were gorgeous.
That last photo is Sunlight Lake from above; we hiked down to its western end and Britt, who had brought his fishing rod and fished in the two higher lakes that looked like they had some fish in them, fished his way back to our camp. (He was doing all catch and release except for here, where he caught a few fish and we cooked them and shared them out along with mushrooms the group had picked along the way - yum!)
Speaking of eating the bounty of the land, we really timed it right for the berries. Along the way up (and also down), we found and ate, roughly in order of altitude although of course their ranges overlap: thimbleberries, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, and best of all, huckleberries! Not that huckleberries are my favorites - I think wild strawberries are better - but we hadn't seen huckleberries in the high country for literally a decade or more, so it was great to be able to pick and eat them as we hiked. (In other words, snackpacking!)
We also saw a lot of wildflowers. Here are some columbine (at the unnamed lake above Sunlight), yellow monkeyflower (at Upper Sunlight Lake), and fireweed (along the Sunlight Creek route):
The next day, Shan joined Britt and me for a hike to the high lake at the head of Grizzly Gulch (Strava track on the topo map), which we'd looked up on our first day, but which is too rugged to ascend (and has no trail). First we went around the east end of Sunlight Lake, and then scrambled/hiked up to Upper Sunlight Lake, at 12,500'. There used to be a horse trail to it - it was Britt's late father's favorite ride - but there's no sign of the trail now. It's a lovely lake, though.
Climbing above it was 4th class, working our way up the rocks and talus. At one point I took my pack off to get something, and maybe a hundred vertical feet later I realized that my camera case, which slides around the waist belt, had come off. Fortunately Britt loves me and hiked back down to retrieve it; I actually spotted it (eagle eyes - with my glasses, anyway) and guided him to it. I owed him lots of back-scratches after that! I was having a hard time with the altitude but managed to persevere to the high lakes at 13,100.
From the edge of the high lakes we could look down into Grizzly Gulch, and the lakes below which looked impossible to get to from either above or below, but very pretty.
After a snack, it was time to head back down to Upper Sunlight Lake, which was very pretty in the afternoon light.
Tough to descend to, though! Britt fished along it and Shan and I hiked along it. And then we had to make our way back to Sunlight Lake, and our Camp, and...maybe we got off track and went down the wrong chutes.
But we made it back to camp!
The next morning, one of the local mountain goats visited us. We knew there must be some around, because we saw their wool caught in the branches.
The hike down Sunlight was almost as tough as the hike up, but at least we were going downhill! As we did on the way up, we ate lots of berries. We hiked past where we'd camped on the way in, but not much farther, as the afternoon thunderstorms hit early and we got caught in a hail storm - ouch, being pelted by hail is no fun! But we set up our tents and also our kite tarp (which you can see in some of the photos above as well) so that we could eat dinner in relative comfort. You'll notice a large number of chanterelles in the frying pan - we found a lot of them on the trail today!
And then it was time to hike the rest of the way out. Back across the river (brr) at the site of the old bridge, and then down the trail, moving rather fast as we were all dreaming of the hamburgers and beer we'd have at the Weminuche Grill near Vallecito Lake! Which tasted very good and was a fitting end to our wonderful trip.
The album of photos at Flickr, few captions, no blah blah
ETA: Shan made a video of this trip, and it's on YouTube! It's a combination of video he took and photos we all shared.
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Date: 2022-08-24 07:27 am (UTC)I sort of do this as well, but for me, it means that I have to go swimming in the lake. *g* Does he do that?
Also, gooseberries! do those grow wild where you are? Or do we not mean the same thing?
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Date: 2022-08-24 03:05 pm (UTC)I looked it up, and there are 200 species of gooseberries! The ones that grow wild in our mountains are Ribes montigenum.
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Date: 2022-08-25 08:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2022-08-25 03:13 am (UTC)