  Only the Colorado section has previous years trips overlaid (2017: yellow, 2018: orange, 2019: red)  Enlargement of the Colorado trips. Only 2019 trips are shown. 2019 was a good year overall but it threw several surprises. The whole year I had planned on my big trip being Skurka's Wind River High Route (WRHR) but some bizarre health issues around that time made a weeklong trip in the 'middle of nowhere' Wyoming seem like a bad idea. (They are now understood and resolved). The WRHR is sort of like the Wyoming analogue of Colorado's Pfiffner Traverse which I had done in August 2018. In spite of that, some fortuitous work/holiday travel got me to some new parts of country: Volcano National park (Hawaii), NYC, and Big Bend National Park (Texas). The major theme for this year appeared to be getting repeatedly humbled on my increasingly ambitious, off-trail routes. I chose these routes because:
While these tough trips always have brief moments where I think "why the hell am I doing this?", they are the ones that I look back on most fondly. Simple, easy and pleasant trips are nice in the moment but they don't stick with me as long after they are done. In previous years, the trips whose details persist the longest in my memory are the ones with the toughest experiences:
In 2019, these things seemed to happen bi-weekly. Nearly every trip on this list fits this theme in one way or another.
And yes, I can't wait to get back to all of these places again. Honorable MentionsOff-Trail Goose CreekTrip dates: June 29-30, 2019 Trip report here The Lost Creek Wilderness is always a good time. The sub-alpine/alpine forests between 9.5k-11k feet are my favorite forest to wander around in. The ground is almost spongey soft and the trees are the perfect distance apart for off-trail travel: not so close that you have the break off dead branches as you move through them, but close enough that it still feels like a challenge. When you break out of the trees you find gems like the one below. I wonder how many people have seen this formation before?  A hidden formation in the Lost Creek Wilderness. Waimanu Valley, HawaiiI'd never been in a truly tropical place like this before. It would have easily made it to the top ten if it weren't for the constant parade of instagram tourists in helicopters going on strafing runs every 30 minutes...  Back to the Return to Coulson GulchThe greater Coulson Gulch area, and the St. Vrain drainages in particular, is my favorite place in the Boulder foothills. They have it all: rugged terrain, scrambling, interesting rock formations, solitude, and views of Wild Basin in RMNP. What more could you want? Coulson Gulch became my go-to hike destination back in March/April when Covid-19 was ramping up, because I knew I wouldn't see other people. It could easily become my go-to once again if people don't get their act together.  Looking SW from Button Rock Mt. near Coulson Gulch. Top Ten10. Upper Storm Lake, Mt. JasperLast year I planned the LIGANN Traverse based on some cryptic descriptions in Gerry Roach's book about Indian Peaks Wilderness. This year he drew me in once again:
Oh, yeah...it's probably a good idea to make sure that you have a modern map even for places you've been before and to stay calm... (see the end of the trip report).  Storm Lake 9. Avoiding Mosquitos in the Sangre de Cristo RangeTrip dates: July 4-5, 2019 Trip report here. The first, and hopefully the last, time I've had to cut a trip short due to unimaginably bad mosquitos. I'm not kidding.  North Crestone Lake 8. Eagle Lake (RMNP)Trip dates: Feb 09-10, 2019 Trip report here This was my first winter trip where I ditched my 5-lb mountaineering tent. This was a learning experience for sure. It takes real skill to camp at tree-line in mid-February with a pyramid tarp. The pitch below is a good example of what not to do. I should have actually used the shovel and seal the edges with snow. As it was, snow blew in under the base all night long. I've used this tarp for all my winter trips since.  Eagle Lake in RMNP 7. Humbled in Cache La Poudre Wilderness When I saw the descriptions of Cache La Poudre Wilderness on the USFS website it seemed like my kind of place:
On my first trip to Cache La Poudre Wilderness I'd explored the area around Mt. McConnel. On my second trip here I wanted to explore the game trails in the canyons. I went to this trip with more than a little hubris. I have prided myself on my off-trail skills and track-record of mostly successful trips in rough environments. I'd had relatively brief experiences navigating a burn areas before and thought they were fun, but I had never seen one this extensive. I planned an off-trail route with reasonable amounts of elevation gain/loss per day and total distance but had not accounted for just how tough the terrain would really be.  Rough terrain on my descent into the S. Fork of the Cache La Poudre River. The canyons were filled with brambles and I was wearing shorts. They were unavoidable and I had to go straight through them. I only made it about a half a mile in the bottom of the canyon before calling it. My legs were shredded by the end of this trip.  It had already been a long day and I was trying to get back to the car around midnight day 2. I was so tired from scrambling over the zig-zagged deadfall and "boulder-hopping" from one log to the next that I got a bit disoriented, even with compass and GPS. Everything looked the same and I dreaded every log. In the dark, I started traveling in small circles, letting my legs choose the path of least resistance instead of my mind choosing the direction that made sense. At this point I admitted defeat and spent an extra night. (I would get similarly exhausted on my Forest Canyon/Hayden Gorge trip due to rough off-trail sections the previous day...). In the epilogue of my original trip report I wrote:
This motivated my favorite comment on a trip report ever (from my Dad):
On the first day I saw my first black bear and bobcat tracks, which was pretty cool.
6. What am I doing in New York?A friend was getting married up in New Jersey so I took an extra day to explore NYC, which I'd never been to before. I wanted to explore it the way I explore mountains, so I opened caltopo and started sketching a route between places I'd heard of before. I wanted to walk up and down as much of Manhattan as possible. I started at dawn and went until about 4pm, covering about 28 miles. At the time I thought it was fascinating, but in an alien, uncomfortable way. In the months since, I've thought back on this trip much more than I initially thought I would.   Oh yeah, the highlight was getting to take a shit in Trump tower. I only regret that I didn't have more to give.  Public bathroom 5. Gore Lake, Gore RangeTrip dates: April 6-7, 2019 Trip report here This turned out to be my favorite winter trip ever. I didn't see anyone over both days and for all but the first mile or two, I was making my own tracks. The views above tree-line were fantastic.  4. Big Bend National Park, TexasTrip dates: Dec 22-23, 2019 Trip report here My first time down to Big Bend. I'm sure I'll be back.   3. Mauna Loa, HITrip dates: July 20-22, 2019 Trip report here Hiking on an active volcano and seeing no one for three days is wild. I was nervous about the "active volcano aspect" but figured that if it was really, really dangerous they wouldn't issue permits. On the second day, I came across a steam vent that scared the hell out of me. I was about 12 miles from the car and death appeared imminent. Then I looked at the map and notice a very useful, descriptive name that evoked normalcy: "steaming cone". Apocalypse averted.  This was a different "above treeline" experience because on Mauna Loa there was no visible organic life whatsoever for about 30 miles. No tundra, no mice, no insects, nothing. The only exception was this dead bird I found near the summit. It takes a long time for something to decompose without good sources to support the microbiome. (please pack out your toilet paper...)  2. Forest Canyon and Hayden Gorge (RMNP)Trip date: August 17-19, 2019 Trip report here Sometimes when I tell people that I go to RMNP all the time, they get really surprised because of how many tourists there are. There is some truth to this, but it's not too hard to find places quiet places to go. Even better, you can find spectacular places to go where absolutely no one goes. Forest Canyon and Hayden Gorge are easily the least visited large areas of the park, and for good reason: they're difficult to reach. The entire route through this section is off-trail. Forest Canyon itself is unbelievably tough, exhausting terrain.  This certainly keeps the "riff-raff" out, making it a bit of a time-capsule, preserving wilderness close to the way it was before people.  Usually I strongly dislike signs of civilization but this one was ok. I haven't see one of these since 2004-2005. Truly not many people go to Forest Canyon. (I packed this out). I planned two days, but it turned into three. Day two ran a little long and I wound up sleeping under a tree and finishing the last several on-trail miles early the next morning. Remember the humbled theme? The total distance was about 32 miles and +/- 8000' of vertical. To put the challenge of Forest Canyon into perspective, consider days 1 and 2 which were similar in difficulty.
1. Highs and Lows in the Never Summers (RMNP).Trip dates: Aug 31- Sept 02, 2019 Caltopo map here This is the most beautiful trip I've ever done. Similar to Forest Canyon and Hayden Gorge, millions of people see the Never Summer Range from Trail Ridge Road, but few people visit it (although certainly more than Forest Canyon). It is a unique, long string of volcanic mountains that lie along a single spectacular ridge. Gerry Roach had written about a "Never Summer Traverse" in his long out of print RMNP book that caught my eye. (Are you noticing a theme?). I'd originally planned on the entire ridge over the course of 3 day trip.  Looking north (backwards) along the ridge I traveled between Static Peak (out of view), Mt. Richtofen, Teepee Mt., Lead Mt from Hart Ridge. There is, however, a moderately good reason for the limited mountaineering interest in the Never Summers: The peaks are very different in character from the rest of RMNP. For the most part, the granite in RMNP makes for excellent scrambling, but Never Summers are basically a giant pile of rubble. This makes for non-technical, but exhausting travel. There are two scrambling sections, both of which, have surprisingly excellent rock.
Water is hard to come by though. If I were doing this again (or advising someone doing it) I'd recommend taking a canister stove to melt old snow. If you did it early enough in the season, you could camp at the 12,400' saddle between Mt. Cirrus and Howard Mt. (where I bailed) and likely have a big snow field at your disposal. I only had a small alcohol stove and only enough fuel to boil water for 2-3 meals, so I had to adopt a different strategy...  Getting drinking water on the ridge is part of a fun game called "stuff old snow into your water bottle and shake it up"
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5/19/2021 03:07:38 am
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