A little bit less than eight miles east of downtown Vail, Deluge Lake lies 11,748′ above sea level at the head of a scenic alpine valley embraced by the flanks of Snow Peak, Mt. Valhalla, Grand Traverse, and the forgetably named Peak 12485.
The lake is reached via a trail that starts at the Gore Creek trailhead just east of Vail proper.
I’ll pull the bandaid off this one quickly: the trail climbs well over three thousand feet in about four and a half miles. Alltrails says it’s 3444′, but according to the maps, the net gain is only (“only”, he says!) 3035′. The four-hundred-foot difference, then, is in miscellaneous dips and rises.
You can break it down into three sections. The first bit runs from the trailhead to about 11,000′. That’s roughly two and a quarter miles, for a slope of a bit more than a thousand feet per mile. The next section is about a mile and ends up still at 11000′, but it rises and falls a bit, so it’s not flat and level. The last section is a bit less than a mile and climbs the remaining 750′ (or a bit more), again with a slope approaching a thousand feet per mile.
July 17, 2024
Having learned where to park last week, I headed straight to the Vail Village parking structure. That’s co-located at the Vail Transportation Center, so I just had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the shuttle bus. My failure this time was not doing any reconnaissance at the trailhead. The shuttle bus drops hikers off at a stop about a quarter of a mile from the trailhead, so I added half a mile to the round-trip distance. And, naturally, you might guess that when I got to the trailhead at 8:30 I found that there was plenty of parking available. Note to self: when hiking from this trailhead on a weekday, check the availability of parking before resorting to the shuttle.
I started off at a very slow pace. I wanted to set a pace that I could maintain over the long haul. I was promptly passed by two women, then by three trail maintenance volunteers. Even in the middle not-cruelly-steep section, I didn’t speed up. And I was slow up the final lift. It wasn’t record-slow territory (I was slower going up the Manitou Incline), I averaged only a bit more than a mile an hour: trailhead to lake in four hours (3:59, to be precise).
I was at about the top of the first climb when I met the trail volunteers again. They were clearing deadfall off the trail. I chatted briefly with them; they clearly didn’t want to be distracted from their work. After passing them, I should have kept track of how many dead tree trunks were blocking the trail. It was in the neighborhood of a dozen. When I got to what turned out to be the last one, I couldn’t help but wonder how they’d deal with it. It was a giant trunk.
There were very few people on the trail. No faster hikers passed me on my way up, and I didn’t encounter anybody coming the other way until the last mile. I spent forty-five minutes at the lake in solitude.
My next meeting with the trail crew was at the large trunk. I could hear them before I saw them: the “thok thok thok” of wedges being hammered into wood. When I got there, they had managed to cut nearly through the 31″ trunk. I arrived unnoticed and eavesdropped for a minute. When they spotted me, they directed me around their work and onto the trail below. I turned to look up at them and immediately moved on: when they completed the cut, a large length of this trunk would roll down the trail to where I was standing.
Not long after, they passed me on their way back to the trailhead. The leader was now feeling chatty. “We cleared all the deadfall!” I told him I was impressed with how much work they’d done. I didn’t think they’d get that far, and I was impressed that they had a (relatively) easy answer to the big obstruction. He then told me his plans for the next week: clearing more trails just like they did today, starting at another giant log blocking another trail in the ENW, 5.9 miles from the trailhead.
Big thanks to the volunteers with the Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance for maintaining the trail.
Looking Up Gore Valley
Deluge Lake
Today’s Beer
Deluge Lake
Collapsing Snowbank
Mount of the Holy Cross (19 miles distant)
I was expecting to be a bit faster on the hike out than my rather glacial pace of the morning. I’ve never been that much faster going out/down than in/up, but given the steepness of this one, I figured there’d be no way it would take as long. I was right. It took me six minutes less to hike back. Okay, there was a short break to refill my water bottle, and a couple of minutes chatting with the crew. Still, surprisingly slow.
Booth Lake lies 11,468′ above sea level at the head of a scenic alpine valley just a bit over five miles as the crow flies northeast of downtown Vail.
There is no parking anywhere near the trailhead. You either have to have somebody drop you off and pick you up later, or take the shuttle bus. The first bus leaves the Vail Transportation Center at 8:00 am. I somehow misread the bus schedule and thought the last bus would stop here before 5:00 pm but the driver told me they run until about midnight. I generally like to start hiking more like 7 than 8, but with busses running until well after dark, the late-ish start isn’t an issue.
Being a non-skier, I’ve never spent any time in Vail. One website says to park either in the Lionshead parking structure or at Vail Village. I made the poor assumption that the choices were listed in order of preference. Sadly, it was probably just in alphabetical order. Next time I need to use the shuttle, I’ll park in Vail Village and save myself some time. If you park at Lionshead, you’ll need to take a different shuttle from there to the Vail Transportation Center where the shuttle to the trailheads starts.
The trailhead is a quarter of a mile from the bus stop, up a paved residential street.
The trail climbs about 3000′ over the 4.4 miles or so of trail. That’s pretty steep. It takes about 1.2 miles to climb the first thousand feet, 1.5 miles for the next thousand, and 1.7 for the final thousand-foot lift. This might lead one to think the hiking mellows out slightly as you go, but each of the three sections has at least one grueling climb. On a typical trail, if there is such a thing, I can generally maintain a two-mile-an-hour pace or thereabouts. On this trail, I wasn’t nearly so fast averaging only 1.25mph.
It was a calm, cloudless day. The forecast high in Denver was 101. I expected the low 80s here.
Hiking in the wilderness, be it Indian Peaks, James Peak, Eagles Nest, or even RMNP, one might say there are two types of hikes: through the forest or across the tundra. Booth Lake is below the tree line, so this would be a forest hike. That’s true, except that the valley is filled with a scattering of trees rather than a forest. The trail is predominantly in the sunlight. This would be quite welcome in September or even October. It was not so much welcome on one of the hottest days of the summer. I don’t mean to complain. The weather was gorgeous. I just think I’d have had an easier time if I had had more shade.
It took me an hour and a quarter to get to Booth Falls. I didn’t even pause there to take in the view. I was focused on moving uphill. I could take a break here on the way back.
The great thing about hiking across grassy slopes is the open views.
Valley view from just below the lake
Red Columbine
Booth Lake, looking west
Today’s Beer
Booth Lake, looking southeast
I reached the lake in a bit over three and a half hours. That was a bit longer than I had guessed, but I wasn’t in any hurry. I encountered only two other hikers until I was within a mile or so of the lake. A group passed me going up and two or three pairs of hikers on their way down. I spent an hour at the lake and there were never more than six people there. Very quiet.
Considering the trail parallels Booth Creek, there are surprisingly few places to get water. It is only alongside the creek for a short way and is seldom convenient. In the mile below the lake, though, there are a few nice streams and I took advantage and refilled my water bottle on the way down. I looked upslope from my refill spot and saw the snowbank it was coming from. I took my ice-cold water not more than a hundred yards from its source!
At the lake, two gals asked me if I was the guy who’d seen goats. I was not. After refilling my water bottle, I met a woman who decided not to go any further. She was so close. She told me she’d been to the lake several times before and was too pooped today to continue up. She said she saw a couple of goats and pointed out the route they’d taken. I kept scanning the valley wall but never did spot them. It won’t be the last time other hikers see animals that evade me.
I’ll get to Mt. Ida in a moment, but first I’ll mention that I made a trip to one of my happy places: Black Lake. I’ve been there a couple of dozen times, so there’s not much point in going into any details. It was a sort of last-minute decision, insofar as a trip to the Bear Lake corridor in RMNP can be last-minute. I picked up a pass to get me in between 8 and 10 and arrived a few minutes after 8. The line at the entrance station was quite long.
My plan was to perhaps make it to Blue Lake, but I figured that might be a bit on the aspirational side, being that it was still June (the 28th, actually). I encountered a number of people who said they were headed to Black Lake, but I never saw any of them again. There wasn’t a huge amount of snow, but clearly enough to discourage many people.
I went a short way above Black Lake and found a nice picnic spot. Being that I got a bit of a late start and there was a little more snow than I was expecting, I didn’t really try to go any farther. As I had my picnic, a number of hikers came down from above. I chatted with two pairs of hikers who had wanted to get to Frozen Lake but were stymied by the first water crossing. Another pair of hikers told me they’d failed to reach Green Lake.
Friday, July 5
The idea to finally summit Mt. Ida wasn’t exactly last-minute, but it was poorly planned. By that, I mainly mean to say that I was oblivious to the fact that the Park would be about as crowded as any day on the calendar.
I arrived at the entrance station at 7. Well, let’s say I made it to the Beaver Meadows visitor center at 7. It took another 15 minutes to get to the entrance station. When the day dawned I was thinking that I’d have a nice uncrowded run over Trail Ridge Road. Hah! Silly me.
Now that reality has set in, I was starting to think about a Plan B. There isn’t much parking at the Milner Pass trailhead and I doubted I’d be able to get a parking spot. This concern was well-founded. When I got there, the lot was full. I needed a comfort stop, and so I parked illegally to use the restroom. Luckily, no Plan B was necessary, as somebody was leaving by the time I returned to my car.
I put boots on the trail at 8:17. This is my fourth hike up the Mt. Ida trail, none of the previous three with the intention of reaching the summit. They were all about reaching the various Gorge Lakes. There are three I haven’t been to: Inkwell, Azure, and Highest. I’ve proved that they’re out of my reach from below. Foster has a couple of routes to those three from above. It’s probably too steep for me, but I won’t know until I put eyes on the terrain. So off to the summit I finally go.
I seem to have weather issues whenever I’m hiking around Mt. Ida. My first visit to Arrowhead was the day it started raining in the 2013 floods. On my backpacking trip, we got rained on for more than a day. I got rained on, too, when I made it to Julian Lake. Today, the sky is a vivid blue with some small fluffy clouds. Yay!
The morning was chilly. I started in shirtsleeves, a bit cool, but expecting to keep warm through exertion. This worked until about fifteen minutes after I got above treeline. The wind was not fierce, but brisk. I put on my jacket.
I passed about as many hikers as passed me and didn’t encounter any people on their way down until I was maybe half an hour from the summit. One of the online guides says this hike is one of the most popular in the Park. There’s not enough parking to support that idea, but it is a popular hike. I was on the summit for about an hour. People came and went, but there were always eight or ten on top.
It took me three hours to reach the top. It took me about three seconds to decide there was no way I’d get to any of the Gorge Lakes from up here.
Azure Lake, Inkwell Lake
Highest Lake, maybe, and Longs Peak
“Got any food?”
Julian Lake
There were fat marmots everywhere. Twice they didn’t move off the trail until I was within a step of them. At the top, they were so used to people that they’d come right up to us, sniffing our bags. Brazen. I saw a few pikas, always carrying grass or flowers in their mouths, but couldn’t get a photo. They don’t stand still. On the summit, one ran almost between the feet of a guy I was talking to.
There’s a fairly long stretch of trail that weirds me out. I swear, it’s uphill in both directions. It’s not, of course, but it sure seems that way to me. Looking at the map, I see it runs within a few feet of 12,000 for a long stretch. Hiking up, even though you’re not climbing, you’re going up to that summit up there, so it looks like this level stretch is uphill. I don’t have a great explanation as to why it looks like it’s climbing on the way down.
On the way back, it wasn’t me asking people questions, it was people asking me. One guy wanted me to point out the summit for him. I thought the answer was fairly obvious, being the highest thing around, but didn’t give a snarky answer. Nearly back to treeline, another guy stopped me to ask how far it was to the top. I told him it took me three hours from the car; he said, “Two hours from here, then?” He looked disappointed. I suggested he go a bit farther up the trail and then find a nice spot to enjoy the view for a few minutes.
Two and a half hours from the summit back to the car. About half an hour from the car, when I took my jacket off, I realized I had neglected to slather on any SPF. Oops. I had the jacket on nearly the entire time, with the hood up for quite a bit of it, so hopefully my face wouldn’t be too badly burned. I only used my trek poles near the summit, and when I had the poles stowed, I often had my hands in my pockets.
Back at the car, I applied the sunscreen, better late than never, and took the top off the car for the drive home. Even if the traffic is horrible, I can enjoy the ideal weather for a drive in a convertible.
Trail Ridge Road and US 36 weren’t as bad as I was expecting. Traffic on 36 moved at nearly the speed limit. And I was pleasantly surprised that, instead of Friday rush hour congestion, traffic was very light from Boulder to home.
This little hike punches above its weight. The first part of the trail is alongside I-70. Wheeler Lakes are small forest lakes nowhere near any dramatic peaks. But once you get away from the road noise, it’s a pleasant little hike.
Coming from Denver, I parked at the “Scenic Area” just short of the junction with CO 91. It’s more like a chain station for the big rigs that has parking for a trail. If you’re coming from the west or south, you can park at Copper Mountain and walk over the overpass.
The traffic noise is somewhere between tolerable and annoying. It doesn’t let up, but it varies. It’s engine noise and tire noise and wind noise. When it’s just cars, you can hear the tires slapping rhythmically on the expansion strips. Motorcycles add a bit of trombone. Every now and then you hear the belch of a Jake brake. The trail here is flat and nearly level, so you can set a quick pace.
As you gain elevation, the highway noise starts to soften. When the trail crosses a little stream, the road noise is finally covered by the babbling brook. The trail moves primarily through thin forest and passes by several grassy marshes and grassy hillsides, granting more open views. The trail climbs incessantly, but never steeply. There’s a large aspen grove that would be quite nice in the fall.
Upper Wheeler Lake
Lower Wheeler Lake
Today’s beer
Lower Wheeler Lake
Clouds of tree pollen
I hiked at a leisurely pace and took a short break for a protein bar and still made it to the farthest lake in two hours.
Counterintuitively, the first lake you reach is the upper lake. The trail crosses a broad saddle and descends a few feet before reaching the upper lake. Continuing on another couple of hundred yards and dropping a few feet you reach the lower lake.
The lakes are quite pleasant. They’re quite open; not entirely surrounded by forest. This is very much in line with the character of the hike. The trail passed across or along several grassy slopes and marshy meadows, giving numerous open views.
I’m always going on about how much better food tastes when I hike to an alpine lake. Today’s beer was a strawberry-rhubarb sour ale. This is the fourth one I’ve had. Drinking the first three, I never really tasted the rhubarb. As a kid, I didn’t like strawberry rhubarb pie, even though I loved strawberries. I haven’t tried it since I was about 10. My palate has changed considerably since then, thankfully. Anyway, today I could taste the rhubarb in the beer. It’s from the same six-pack, so it’s not like it’s a different batch. But I drank this one at an alpine lake, where my sense of taste seems so much enhanced.
The Drive
I’m in the habit of getting to the trailhead perhaps a bit earlier than I would like to. I’m always worried about getting a parking spot. On this hike, though, I figured parking wouldn’t be a problem. I woke up early nonetheless. Why not drive over Loveland Pass instead of going through the Eisenhower Tunnel? It doesn’t add much time, and it’s much more scenic. So I did.
I mounted two cameras, one on the nose and one on the tail. I very nearly got a clean run, encountering only two cars going in my direction. I caught the second one and was looking for a place to pass when I saw a pretty big rock in the middle of our lane. I moved way to the left, but the Charger ran right over it. Shards from the rock showered my car. He didn’t appear to be leaking any oil or coolant, but he pulled over not long after.
Just after I passed him, I rounded a hairpin and came face to face with a herd of bighorn sheep. On the trail, carrying my DSLR, I’m constantly getting asked if I’ve seen any wildlife. Here on the road is the only wildlife I saw for the day.
It is time for the 24 Hours of Lemons race at HPR. Lemons is an endurance car racing series on dedicated road courses for $500 cars. There are two Lemons races at HPR this year, this one is an actual 24-hour race (as opposed to, say, racing 8 hours on Saturday and 8 more on Sunday).
We did this last year but had problems with the car and I never got to drive. Driving in the dark will be a new challenge for me
The team was out at the track on Friday working on the car. I figured the best way to help would be to stay well out of their way, so I didn’t show up at the track until early Saturday. Gates opened at 7:30 and I arrived not long after.
They had some excitement yesterday, losing a wheel on the track. The brake disc kept that corner of the car off the ground, sort of. The disk wasn’t terribly damaged, but the oil pan may have been in worse shape. I’m told they put part of a battery bracket on the oil pan, along with a bunch of JB Weld.
After a few minutes, Mike came out of his motor home and suggested we take the car for a spin. He hopped into the passenger seat and I got behind the wheel. “Are we buckling up for a trip around the paddock?” “No, we’re going to take it out on the highway.”
So we did. Keep in mind that we’re in a car that’s not quite street-legal, and isn’t registered, licensed, or insured. It has a roll cage and we’re not wearing helmets, which means, if we do get into an accident, our heads are likely to impact the only slightly padded steel tubes of the roll cage. But we’ll only go a couple of miles to test our repairs, so I figured there’s such a small risk of getting arrested or killed that I’m willing to proceed.
The car ran, drove straight, and braked in a straight line, unless you went really hard on the brakes, in which case the tail got a bit happy and wanted to swing around to the front. I don’t expect our cheap race car to handle like the Lotus. I reckoned I’d be okay in the car, so I gave it a clean bill of health.
When we got back to the entry gate at the track, Glen, the track manager was waiting for us. “I need to see your license, registration, and proof of insurance!” He was pretty pissed. I said, “I’ll have to go fetch them,” knowing full well that there was nothing to fetch. Glen said, “Okay, I need to see them in thirty minutes. If you don’t have them, you’re going home.” That’s a great way to start the day!
After a few minutes of wild speculation (someone suggested, “We could photoshop the documents!” Really?) we tracked Glen down, ready to take our medicine. Glen sat us down and lectured us. “There’s a big yellow sign on the gate that says race cars aren’t to go out on US 36. A while back, some SCCA tube frame car got on the highway and was stopped right outside the track. The county commissioners came out to talk to us and said if race cars keep going on the highway, they’ll close the track down.” We told him we understood and we’d start packing up our stuff and leave. Then he said, “Why don’t you wait a while. I hate to kick somebody else’s customer out. Let me talk to the Lemons people and see what they say.”
A bit later we met Glen again. He gave us the choice of packing up and leaving or making a $250 donation to Lemons of Love, a charity supporting cancer sufferers. “I think I already know the answer.” We said we’d make the donation. Glen had us hold out our hands, whereupon he slapped our wrists. To be precise, he slapped the back of our hands, but it’s close enough to a literal slap on the wrist.
I think we got off very lightly. This is one of those cases where our actions could have impacts greater than are obvious. I’m perfectly willing to take the (very small) risk of getting a ticket, but I hadn’t considered the possible result of my actions had we been stopped by the police. I’d hate to be responsible for the track getting closed down.
Oh, and the “big yellow sign”? It exists, and it’s yellow. But I wouldn’t call it big. I’ve been through that gate dozens of times and couldn’t tell you how long the sign has been there. It’s not much bigger than a sheet of notebook paper.
Anyway, we dodged the bullet and were going racing.
The object of the race is to run more laps in 24 hours than anybody else. That means you have to keep the car running laps for as many of those 24 hours as possible. It is not the object to go as fast as you can. Just drive the car around, stay out of trouble, and don’t get black-flagged.
Each black flag you get has a bigger penalty than the one before it. If you get 5 black flags, you’re disqualified. But they reset the counter every eight hours, so it’s pretty lenient. I’ve been black-flagged twice in three races, and I think I had the most black flags. I wasn’t too worried about getting disqualified.
I was scheduled to drive from 4 pm to 6 pm, then again for two hours starting at 2 am.
But we had problems with the car. The brake situation must have been worse than I thought. The other drivers kept spinning under heavy braking. We quickly got two penalties. For our third penalty, the judges showed us pictures of the Warner duck and the Disney duck and had us pick one. We had to replicate the picture on the side of the car using duct tape. The “Don’t Be a Duck” penalty. Mike knocked this out of the park, but it did keep us parked for quite a while.
After the penalty, we switched drivers and rejoined the race. I was not even back to the motor homes when I saw the car heading to the judge’s stand. We couldn’t even make it a lap without getting penalty number four. They parked us for an hour.
Facing the real threat of disqualification, we put our least experienced driver in the car. He ran an error-free stint to get us to the reset at 8 hours. He wasn’t trying to set any records and he didn’t spin the car. Kudos to Dan.
Mike’s duct tape duck
Yours truly behind the wheel
Yeah, that hole doesn’t belong there
I finally got into the car at about 10 pm. I ran my out lap and was on my first running lap when the car started having trouble. I radioed that I was losing power. I had had no high cam, but I didn’t have any revs, either. I didn’t make it back to the pits and had to be towed in.
The alternator had died. One of the guys thought the warning light on the dash was on when I left the pits but wasn’t sure. Mike had to go home to get a spare, so we were out of action for about three hours. I rested for about an hour, but only slept for about ten minutes.
There was some spitballing on what to do about the brakes. Three or four possible remedies were discussed. I told them not to do anything, I’d just drive it.
It took me a few laps to adjust to running in the dark, but once I got used to it, I thought it was fun. I couldn’t resist trying to go fast, but I wasn’t trying to break any lap records, so I didn’t feel the need to do any heavy braking, and if I did, to be sure to do it in a straight line. But, really, I didn’t have any difficulties keeping the car under control. My only wobble was under acceleration – torque steer – while I was making a pass. We weren’t the fastest car on the track, but I had no trouble consistently turning 2:20s and 2:21s. For an hour and twenty minutes.
I’m not really sure I have the sequence correct. This is for sure: I went four off exiting turn 2, and the car started acting like it did when the alternator was bad. I can’t say for sure whether the engine was failing before I went off, but I think it was. I don’t think it contributed to the off, but I don’t know why I went off. I radioed in, “I have no power again,” I tried to get it back to the pits but in turn 11 it grenaded.
Here’s where my lack of preparation nearly causes problems. I’m that guy that just wants to drive the car. I love driving a car fast. I’m fully engaged, very much in the here and now. My heart races. Put me in the car and I’ll go, go, go!
Had this happened in the daylight, I’d have had no problem. But it’s dark in the car. And I don’t know where the fire extinguisher pull was.
The car wasn’t on fire. That is to say, I saw a lot of smoke but no flames, so I remained harnessed in the car. The smoke cleared and after a while, the tow truck showed up.
Game over.
I don’t think we know yet what the cause was. Catastrophic oil loss, but why? The way the oil was sprayed in the engine compartment didn’t fit with an oil pan failure, so we don’t think losing a wheel had anything to do with it. It may have been something to do with a bargain sandwich plate we were using. That’s racing.
We had an oil temperature gauge, but it failed in the early hours. Something to do with a plastic part. In any event, without an oil pressure gauge, I have no way of knowing when it failed. I wonder if I’d have seen smoke if it had happened in daylight. Did I spread oil over half the track?
I’ve ticked a lot of boxes on my racing resume. I’ve raced in the rain and the dark. I drove on a team that won one of the biggest prizes. I raced at an historic race track. I’ve done autocross in a parking lot, on an airfield, and on a frozen lake. And now I’ve blown an engine.
I’ve hiked to Forest Lakes this time of year a couple of times before. I always have the ambition to make it to the upper lake, but there’s a lot of snow and I call it quits at the lower lake. This time, I told myself, I’d make it to the upper lake.
I got to the parking lot at 8:10. Less than a dozen cars were there, and one of them was headed out, his morning run done. I chatted briefly with a couple of backpackers that I passed just before we got to the Wilderness boundary. They were headed to Rogers Pass Lake and Hart Lake. “Maybe even the Divide” he said. I didn’t tell them they’d be unlikely to find anywhere without snow within a mile of any lake. I didn’t want to spoil their adventure.
The first challenge of the day was the bridge over Arapaho Creek. I’ve only been here a handful of times, but the water was much higher than I’d ever seen it. Water was flowing over six or eight feet of trail on each side of the bridge. It’s not quite ankle-deep, but the rocks are slippery and maybe not securely placed. The middle of the bridge is drenched, so you know you’ll get a quick, cold shower. I started to wonder how much higher the water might be after five hours of warm sunshine.
Not long after crossing the bridge, we get to the snow. It’s piled up in widely spaced drifts. Soon the drifts aren’t widely spaced and there is much less bare ground. The drifts are mushy around the edges but firm on top and I don’t need to use the microspikes.
I lost the trail pretty quickly, more or less as I expected. I saw an occasional old bootprint but nothing like any sign of foot traffic. I’m left to my own devices.
I eventually came to a half-broken bridge over a stream. I crossed it but immediately had second thoughts. I thought that by crossing the stream, I’d be heading to Arapaho Lakes, and I didn’t want to go that way. So after a short while, I recrossed the stream and climbed alongside it, expecting it to take me to the lower lake.
I made it to a lake, alright, but it wasn’t the lower lake. The lower lake has a mountain view and some large sun-lit rocks that make a nice place to picnic. This lake has no view to speak of and no picnic rocks. I was at the larger of the two unnamed ponds a quarter mile or so east of lower Forest Lake.
I can see why it’s unnamed. It is an unremarkable snow-fed forest lake. I stayed for about an hour. I did manage to find a picnic spot. It was quite pleasant. The weather was fine, sunny, calm. I enjoyed the route-finding, even with the navigational error. I was able to walk mostly on firm snow. I had my micro-spikes with me but didn’t use them. Traction wasn’t a problem, and I did a pretty good job of avoiding post-holing.
Snow drifts on the marsh
Little Serendipity Pond
Picnic (not much of a) view
Today’s beer
I was operating under the assumption that I’d get to the lower lake. Once there, I was sure I could find the tracks of all the folks who come up here. Being in the wrong place, I turn to Plan B: retrace my footsteps. Above the Arapaho Creek bridge, I hiked mostly on snow. Mostly. So it should be pretty easy, right?
Around the pond, I crossed a couple of wide marshes. Both times, scanning the far side of the marsh, I couldn’t see any of my tracks. I took what looked to be the most obvious route and got it right both times.
The sun was doing a job on my footprints, and in the shade, it wasn’t much easier. But I was able to follow my tracks for a good while. It was a more challenging task than I thought it would be. Coming across the occasional deer and elk tracks added some misdirection. Aside from crossing the stream on a different snow bridge, I was able to retrace my route with very little variation. It was a fun exercise. (It did not matter whether I could retrace my steps or not. All I needed to do to get back to the bridge was to follow the water.)
Since the couple I met just outside the boundary, I didn’t see another hiker all day until I made it back to the Arapaho Creek bridge where I passed a guy who was on his way up. Usually, I have to hike a lot farther to get that much solitude.
The pond has no name, but that won’t stop me from calling it Little Serendipity Pond. Not that the pond is little, because it’s not. It’s the level of serendipity that is little. I was happy to visit a lake I hadn’t been to before. I don’t know that I’ll ever go back, but it was an easy hike, it provides solitude, and there are far worse places to spend a pleasant day.
I have a brick walkway from the front door to the sidewalk on the street. For the last few years, ants have been undermining the bricks. It has gotten too bad even for me to put up with. Yesterday I finally got off my ass and started working on it.
I know my technique is all wrong, and that I’m not doing a great job, but it’s much better today than it has been in quite a while, so I’m happy.
To do it properly, I’d pull all the brick up at once, grade the whole thing, compact it nicely, and then lay all the brick back down, using a string to keep properly aligned. Instead, I did it a few courses at a time, compacting only with footprints. At the top, where the ants were, I did the last dozen courses together, spraying for ants before I laid the brick. I took out two containers of roots and put in 100 of the 150 pounds of sand I bought. It’s a little uneven and because it’s not properly compacted, I expect it to settle randomly. I think I improved the grade at the bottom, where a puddle always formed. We’ll soon see.
To say I cleaned the bricks would be an overstatement. I knocked off anything caked onto them, and the gaps between the bricks are as small as I could make them. And it sure looks like they’re closer together. But when I got to the steps onto the deck, a few of the bricks were an eighth of an inch too close to the step to get the brick into. I put a couple of them on their sides, thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be that noticeable. Michael spotted it the first time he walked up the walk.
One thing about this little job surprised me.
I like to tell myself that, since I started writing this blog, I’ve been paying more attention to what I do and what I see. That I’m not running on autopilot. That I take notice of my surroundings.
I figure I’ve walked up and down this walkway on the order of three thousand times. And it wasn’t until I took it apart that I saw there was an error in the pattern. I considered putting it back in or inserting some other minor error, but I chickened out and went conformist.
It took me about seven hours over two days. I’m pretty sore right now. Working on your knees, getting up and down a lot, exercises some muscles that don’t normally get much exercise.
Last weekend was Lotus Colorado’s spring drive. Genae hasn’t been a fan of riding in the Elise since I “upgraded” to solid motor mounts a few years ago. Even though I downgraded half the mounts to stock, she hasn’t been in the car yet, so we drove the land barge Lexus. This allowed us to carry whatever creature comforts we desired, and the Lexus has A/C while the Lotus doesn’t, so there are some advantages. But it’s give-and-take. Having excess cargo and passenger capacity, we were told we’d be the “sweep” car. A few of the cars are quite old; one is older than I am. So if somebody has mechanical issues, we can make sure they’re not abandoned by the side of the road, left to their own devices.
I’m not likely to do this again. The entry list for the weekend had 17 cars on it. I didn’t bother to count how many actually appeared, but 17 was about right. Every time we hit the road, I’d wait until everybody else got going and join the end of the line. As it’s almost impossible to get 17 cars through the same green light, or get on a highway with all 17 cars together, it typically meant that the head of the line was a mile or two down the road before we even got rolling.
On most of our other club drives, whoever was leading the pack would pull over for the occasional scenic spot for a group photo, or even just pull over to get the group back together. That wasn’t how it went on this drive. The leading cars were all in a race to the destination. Even with us exceeding the speed limit by 20 or 25 mph we still lost ground. The worst case was the last day of the drive when we arrived at the restaurant for lunch about 20 minutes after everybody else. We very much felt like we weren’t part of the group. So it goes.
Another difference between this trip and most of the others is that this one was pretty much just driving and eating at restaurants. In the past, we’d stop at various points of interest. We’ve been to the Sand Dunes, the Black Canyon, the Colorado Monument, the Royal Gorge Bridge, and so on. There may have been other trips where we didn’t visit any attractions, but none come immediately to mind.
I’ve never put together one of these drives. I know that it’s not easy, and the organizers put quite a bit of effort into it. I appreciate it. I really do. But I will always retain the right to go our own way for a meal. Apparently, we gave great offense to some when we let them know we’d be skipping the second BBQ meal of the day for an alternative. I like BBQ, but having had it for lunch, I didn’t really want it for dinner, too. We were told that the restaurant had non-BBQ options, but we didn’t really want $40 steaks. Being tail-end Charlie all weekend, then getting grief over not wanting BBQ twice a day detracted a bit from our joy.
It was a beautiful drive. We went over a long list of mountain passes: Cottonwood, Slumgullion, Wolf Creek, Coal Bank/Molas/Red Mountain, McClure, and Independence with the group and Fremont Pass after we peeled off and headed home. The snow on Cottonwood and Independence (which just opened the day before) was eight or ten feet deep.
Sorry I don’t have many photos to include, but these things happen when you can’t stop and smell the roses. (We would have stopped at the top of Independence Pass, but what little of the parking lot got plowed was jam-packed when we got there and there was nowhere to park.)
I won’t bore anybody with the details of the insurance claim for the damage incurred when my car got backed into in the motel parking lot in March. In summary, they said they’d pay for me to have the front clam replaced, then they sent me a check for less than they said and it took some back-and-forth to get that explained. I’m still waiting for them to deal with the other party’s insurance, so I should be getting another $600 from them to cover my deductible.
Of course, that money started burning a hole in my pocket right away. Before I even had the check, I was exploring the possibilities.
A new clam would use up all the money, plus some (which, theoretically I’d get reimbursed). But I’d have a nice, shiny clam installed and painted by a professional. I might be without the car for six or eight weeks (or more?) while the work was done.
But I have a list of other work I’d like to do to the car. I replaced the transmission not long ago. The third gear synchro was going out and it was cheaper to replace than to have repaired. Supposedly. I don’t know if the transmission I bought (online, from an individual rather than a company) was bad when I bought it or went bad very quickly. Same issue: third-gear synchro. For a while, it was okay when everything was warmed up, but when still cold, third would grind. So for the last year or more, I often skipped third gear and went straight from second to fourth.
On the second day at Barber, though, third gear was crunchy all day, even when well warmed up. I need to either repair or replace the transmission. Again. Sigh.
If I’m going to go to the trouble to replace the transmission, I should also replace the clutch. We replaced the clutch when we did the last transmission, so it only has about 25,000 miles on it.
When we installed the previous transmission, we had to make some adjustments to the shifter cables. It seemed to me that we had reached the limit of the adjustments we could make, but I could be in error. I found there are cables I can get that are upgrades – they have heim joints on each end. While we’re in there doing the transmission and clutch, we may as well replace the cables, too.
Finally, I’ve decided that my solid motor mounts are the cause of my electrical issues on last spring’s trip to Atlanta. With the solid mounts, the entire car vibrates and buzzes and I’m blaming this vibration for the electrical short.
I decided to return to stock motor mounts for the left and right sides and leave the solid mounts in for the front and rear.
I discussed all this with Mike and the guys on my LeMons racing team. Mike seems to get his jollies by working on cars with Toyota engines and transmissions. It turns out that he also has some experience with fiberglass repairs.
Not long ago, Mike bought himself an Elise. It needs some work on the front clam. So Mike and I came to an agreement: If I bought a replacement transmission, clutch, cables, and motor mounts, he’d do the work in exchange for keeping my old, bad transmission. Also, if I buy all the materials and supplies needed to repair both clams, he would do the bodywork. He would also show me how to do fiberglass repairs if I wanted to learn. When it was all said and done, I should have a few dollars left over from the insurance settlement. What’s not to like?
Two weeks ago, I took the car over to Mike’s place. We He worked on it all day Saturday (from about 10am to after midnight) and for a few hours on Sunday. Driving it home, I noticed two problems. First, I had to use the reverse lockout to get the car into first or second gears and second, the parking brake indicator light is always on now.
The first problem was relatively easy to fix. This involves adjusting the cables. I started in the back, on the transmission, but that wasn’t working. Adjustments can also be made to the shifter mechanism. This was the solution.
Kevin’s Elise, my Elise, the Lemons car, Mike’s Elise
Mike, slaving away
The missing piece
The brake light is another story. Somewhere along the line, we lost a part. When you release the parking brake, the handle comes down on a little part that is then pushed forward to press a button. We’ve looked everywhere, but can’t find it. If the part was a little bigger, I’d suggest I’ll find it as soon as I buy a replacement.
It’s been two weeks since the repairs were complete, but today was the first time I’ve had the car on the highway. The transmission is a straight swap for the original equipment: Toyota C64 transmission with LSD. Except that this one has the Toyota Celica sixth gear, which is a little taller. In sixth gear, the engine is revving 11% less. It will have no effect on the track, as I’ve never used sixth on track. Heck, some tracks I don’t even get into fifth. I’m expecting that on my next road trip, I may be able to top 40 miles to the gallon of gas.
The motor mounts also make a big difference. I still have the stiffness I want under acceleration, but the car is a lot more civilized. You can hold a conversation without yelling and your fillings don’t want to vibrate right out of your teeth. I’m pretty happy about that.
We don’t have a definite schedule for the bodywork yet. My only request is that we get it completed before LOG, which is late September. Mike’s car currently has an orange front clam on it. That’s not the bad one. When we do the bodywork, we’ll put his orange clam on my car so I can still drive it while. I’m sure it’ll look fairly hideous, but all-in-all, I’m happier driving a hideous-looking Elise than not driving an Elise at all.
I took advantage of Jayne and Dan’s gracious hospitality and spent three nights in Atlanta. I enjoyed a couple of nice dinners in the company of charming people, had a couple of much-needed long walks, and enjoyed not driving. I did laundry.
Over five days, I spent 28 hours driving on the highways and another four on the track. And the trip home will be another 27 hours. That’s a stupid amount of seat time.
Although I had no concrete plans for diversions on the trip home, I did have a couple of ideas. On last year’s abortive trip, a trip to Shiloh got scrubbed. But not being able to lock the car makes planning easier. I can’t count on finding another friendly groundskeeper, so diversions were off the menu.
I’m okay with that. My route would avoid interstates until I was a hundred miles from home, split nicely into three nine-hour days, and on two of the three days I gain an hour.
Thursday
I went from Georgia to Alabama, then Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and, finally, Missouri. Outside of the towns, I could drive at a pace of my choosing, needing to pass only a handful of cars.
The rural South, by which I mean the backroads of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, is pretty dense with Confederate flags and Trump flags. Today I drove through a lot of country that has been celebrating insurrectionists for generations and is supporting an insurrectionist today.
At the hotel, I thought I was able to lock the car. I had it in a well-lighted spot in the front, but since it locked, I’d rather park in the back, where I could see it from my room. There’s a nice spot, right next to the light pole, in a single spot (as opposed to a duplex spot). An hour after parking it, I drove to get dinner. When I unlocked the car, it started beeping and it beeped until I hit the button again. At the restaurant, I tried to lock it, but it failed again. Okay, it’s fickle.
After dinner, I noticed that I had left my glasses case in the car. So when I stepped outside for a deep breath of relaxation, I grabbed the case and it locked again. Two out of three now!
My room is on the fourth floor. I’m parked in my single spot and there’s a big pickup that’s in the hotel side of his duplex spot, taking both sides. Another pickup pulls into the spot next to the other light pole, but his tailgate is way over the line of his other spot.
About thirty seconds after the couple in the recently arrived truck enter the building, my alarm goes off. Nobody was anywhere near the car. I was just looking at it. I didn’t know how long the alarm would sound, but I hustled out to the parking lot. When I unlocked it, it beeped until I hit the button again. So I’m back to Plan A, leaving it unlocked.
I’m in a La Quinta this time, instead of the usual dives. But even here I can’t win: the light over the sink flashes about once a second. And it flashes once more after you turn it off. Very annoying. The ice machine works.
Today, about the last thirty miles of road were part of my route on the way to Atlanta last year, but in the other direction. This is the short stretch through Illinois between bridges across the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Cool bridges.
Friday
The most enjoyable part of the drive was the first few hours, highlighted by my miles on MO 34. It’s a very nice Lotus Road. Twisty, up and down, left and right, mile after mile. If you’re passing through southeast Missouri, it’s worth considering. I enjoyed a different part of southern Missouri last trip. Looks like Lotus Roads are in abundance here.
I don’t recall seeing either a Confederate flag or a Trump flag today. Lots of signs for lots of gun stores, and nearly as many gun stores as churches.
I’m averaging over 35 mpg.
I was expecting southern Kansas to be much like northern Kansas. Not true. I prefer northern Kansas to southern Kansas. There is more traffic down here. Not so much traffic I couldn’t pick my pace, but I had to make quite a few passes.
In the parking lot at tonight’s motel, I met a bunch of college kids who were on their way to a rocket competition. Their rocket is about seven feet tall. They ran a separation test in the field next to the motel parking lot. It was successful. They didn’t launch it, just tested that the stages separated properly. I asked them if it was their moonshot. They laughed. One guy said it would reach about 15,000 feet. Another corrected him: it’ll go 5,000.
Dinner at Luigi’s. I had the cheese ravioli, a Peroni, and a chocolate cheesecake. It’s downtown. I was going to park in the adjacent lot, but it was metered. It helpfully told me I only needed to pay during the hours listed, but no hours were listed. It’s across the street from the police station, and there are police vehicles parked here. Not having any coins, and noticing that the spot right in front of the restaurant entrance was empty, I parked there. I got to watch people look at the car. I’m sad that people see her damaged like this.
Saturday
I picked up a biscuit sandwich at the fast food joint next to the gas station. In the parking lot was a black pickup truck with a tinted back window. Written on the window in pink and pale blue in a woman’s handwriting, “Why do you support the rapist fraudster insurrectionist?” It might have been “we” instead of “you”. I was surprised to see it. On this trip, I’ve seen a lot of pro-Trump sentiment, nothing pro-Biden, and only this anti-Trump.
Kansas Route 96 isn’t quite arrow-straight and not quite billiard-table flat, but it’s not far off. It’s the antithesis of a Lotus Road. Kansas 96 turns into Colorado 96 at the border, then I pick up US 287 at Eads. 287 has a lot of truck traffic. Thankfully, there are a few passing lanes. I did pass a string of 4 rigs without a passing lane, but they were nose-to-tail.
Summary
I drove in eight states, covering 3,201 highway miles and 293 miles on track for a total of 3,494 miles. I now have 105,848 miles on the car. It had less than 17,000 when I bought it, so I’ve put about 89,000 miles on it. Roughly 20,000 of those miles are on these track-day road trips.
I enjoyed the trip despite the car getting backed into. I keep telling myself it could have happened at Safeway, but it didn’t.
Barber is a wonderful track on fantastic grounds with an impressive museum. I thoroughly enjoyed driving the back roads of America.
