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.
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.
I’m a little bit ashamed to admit how much of my life is spent on autopilot. We all have a tendency to let ourselves get stuck in ruts: “I’m doing this because I’ve done this before and I’m used to it.” That sort of thing. I think a good portion of my choices of where to hike has been out of laziness. I continue to hike in Rocky Mountain National Park because I’m comfortable there. It’s close, I know my way around the Park, I have a first-rate guide, and so on. It only takes me an hour and a half or so to get to any east-side trailhead and about two hours for a west-side hike.
I started getting away from the Park when they instituted their timed entry pass system. I climbed out of my rut and looked around. The Indian Peaks Wilderness is close – just south of RMNP. And James Peak is adjacent to IPW. Again, trailheads for IPW and JPW are close and can be reached in about an hour and a half.
Climbing further from my rut, I finally realized just how many hiking trails I can reach in no more time than it takes to reach a west side trailhead in RMNP.
One of those trailheads is the Willowbrook trailhead in a residential area of Silverthorne. This trailhead can be used to reach Salmon Lake and Willow Lakes, in southeastern Eagles Nest Wilderness. These lakes are surrounded by the dramatic cliffs of a number of 13ers: Rain Peak, East Thorn, and Red Peak.
I don’t have a good guidebook for this area, so I’m doing my research online. I’ve been around the internet long enough to know that not everything I read there is true. I don’t generally think this is much of an issue when it comes to researching hikes, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind. For example, two resources I commonly use are AllTrails and ProTrails (those links go to their respective Salmon Lake route descriptions). AllTrails says it’s a 9.8-mile round trip to Salmon Lake but ProTrails says it’s 15.3. ProTrails would have us start at a different trailhead. I use CalTopo maps and the distances given there match AllTrails.
A couple of notes before we start. First, the parking lot here holds only about a dozen cars but there is a shuttle available. Arrive early or find the shuttle. Second, there is a large network of trails in the area and there is a series of trail junctions. For hikes where I’m not going off-trail, I don’t always carry a map. Bring a map for this one.
Thursday, August 17
I arrived at the trailhead a bit before 7:30. There were only a few cars in the parking lot, and I’m guessing those belong to backpackers who spent the night at one of the lakes. CalTopo shows trails starting at two points near the parking lot, perhaps a hundred feet apart. This is incorrect. There is only one trail from here. There’s a place to register for overnight stays in the Wilderness. There is no fee, and no registration is required for day hikes.
The trail starts in a residential area and passes through Summit County open space before reaching the Eagles Nest boundary about three-quarters of a mile. CalTopo shows four trail junctions before the boundary, but there are only two. The forest is sparse enough to allow views of Silverthorne and Dillon Reservoir and dam. Alongside the lower sections of trail, beetle-kill trees are stacked in pyramids ready for burning when there’s snow on the ground.
Shortly after entering the Wilderness, the trail meets the Gore Range Trail. For the next mile and a half, the trail passes through an interesting section of forest. At first, it reminded me of the area around Ouzel Falls about ten or fifteen years after the fire. All the big trees were dead, the living trees are no more than ten or twelve feet tall. With no big trees, the views open up.
Here, there are no signs of fire in the last century. Hiking up the trail I didn’t notice it, but on the way down you can see that all the dead trees are lined up in the same direction. Why are all the dead trees lined up so nicely?
This area was greatly affected by beetle kill quite a while ago. It was one of the first places I recall seeing beetle-kill forest. The beetles burrow into mature trees, all with trunks at least ten inches in diameter. So all the big trees die, but beetle-kill trees take a while to fall over. They go from reddish-brown to gray and finally get knocked over randomly by wind or snow over the years. And they’d fall over in all sorts of directions.
I think this area was hit by a microburst. Two or three or four minutes of very high winds. Even live trees can’t stand up to the force; this dead forest never had a chance. Any creature unfortunate to be in the area was unlikely to survive. The dead trees are so densely packed, that getting through this area without a trail would be impossible. You just can’t bushwhack through it, you’d have to detour. Truly impassable without a trail.
Because the deadfall was so dense, I couldn’t see too many stumps. But I don’t think there were as many stumps as trees. Most of the trunks looked to be snapped off at the roots.
The next trail junction is the Willow Lake trail. Here the trail starts climbing steadily and relentlessly. It’s not terribly steep, but it goes on and on at a constant rate. On the way down, even knowing how long it went on, I was surprised at how long it went on. Above the top of this grade, though, the trail mellows considerably, climbing no more than two hundred feet a mile (with one exception).
After the big climb, the trail traverses a steep valley wall and reaches the final trail junction of the hike: the Salmon Lake trail. My plan is to visit both Salmon Lake and Upper Willow Lake (and lay eyes on the other various Willow Lakes). By my reckoning, it’s 5.8 miles to Upper Willow Lake with a one-mile round-trip side trip to Salmon for a total of 12.6 miles and maybe 2,800 vertical feet.
I would do Upper Willow Lake first, and if I didn’t feel like doing Salmon it would be a good excuse to come back. Alternatively, it would make a good single-night backpacking trip.
Continuing toward Upper Willow Lake after the Salmon junction, the forest thins again, revealing the dramatic faces of the mountains and ridges containing the valley: the flank of Red Peak to the south, Capricorn, Gemini Twins, and Sagittarius to the west, and East Thorn to the north. The trail meanders along a stream and among and along four or five lakes and ponds before reaching its final destination.
I stayed at the upper lake for forty-five minutes. I had my picnic lunch first. Instead, I should have taken a bunch of pictures first. By the time I was done eating, the few puffy clouds of earlier had grown big and gray. So it goes. After lunch, I explored for a few minutes before heading back down.
Back at the junction, still feeling fresh, I headed up to Salmon Lake. This is the exception to the generally mellow nature of the trail above the big climb. Here we are on a section reminiscent of the big climb. It is mercifully shorter, but at first seems almost malicious: we have climbed a hundred feet or more above Salmon Lake.
Beetle-kill Pyramids
East Thorn
Grays and Torreys, 20 miles distant
Willow Lakes (11,248′)
Willow Lakes (11,355′)
Upper Willow Lake
Upper Willow Lake and Zodiac Ridge
Dillon Lake
Salmon Lake
Salmon Lake
Salmon Lake, I think, is not as scenic as Upper Willow Lake. True, that’s not a low bar. The trail skirts north of the lake, avoiding a giant boulder field, dumping the hiker at the willow-choked western end. Half, or more, of the shore is talus.
By counting the number of hikers I encountered all day, I doubt the parking lot ever filled up. There were only two cars there in addition to mine when I got back to the trailhead. I didn’t meet more than a dozen hikers and backpackers.
On the hike out, I got sprinkled on a bit, just enough for me to put the raincoat on. There was a thunderstorm across the valley to the east, the thunder distinct but not nearby. I got a big dose of the solitude I enjoy. Not a bad way to spend the day.
Due to the generally sparse forest for much of the hike, the views are above average. There’s only one section of trail I found difficult. It’s certainly worthy of a return visit.
Timetable
Not an out-and-back, this hike was a Y. The stem is the base of the Y.
This is my first hike in Eagles Nest Wilderness and the Gore range. The Gore range towers above the western side of Colorado Highway 9 between Dillon Reservoir and Green Mountain Reservoir. Vail is nearly due west from Dillon, but I-70 travels nearly twice the distance to get there, heading southwest to Copper Mountain before turning northwest towards Vail to go around the southern end of the Gore range. Pitkin Lake is reached from the western boundary of Eagles Nest Wilderness near East Vail.
Pitkin Lake is situated at 11,351′ above sea level immediately south of the ridge that connects East Partner Peak and West Partner Peak (both above 13,000′) and immediately east of the ridge that connects West Partner Peak and Outpost Peak. To the east of the lake are the rugged peaks of Mount Solitude and Climbers Point.
To reach Pitkin Lake, take exit 180 from I-70 and head east on Fall Line Drive to the parking lot at the end of the road. It holds only about a dozen cars. An alternative to parking there is to take the shuttle bus from Vail which serves both the Pitkin Lake trailhead and the Booth Lake trailhead.
Pitkin Lake and Pitkin Creek are presumably both named for Frederick Pitkin, who was the second governor of Colorado. When searching for places named for Frederick Pitkin, I find a town, a county, and several streets in various Colorado cities and towns but this lake and creek are not mentioned. It seems a six-block-long street in Saguache is more notable than this lake and creek. I disagree.
When researching this hike, I found that ProTrails lists the distance as 8.9 miles round trip and AllTrails has it at 9.6 miles. I find that a non-trivial distance. After hiking it, I can’t help but wonder if it might even clock in at 10 miles. In any case, the trailhead is at about 8,425′ and the lake is at 11,351′ for a net elevation gain of about 2,925′.
Saturday, August 12
When I planned this hike, I didn’t know there was a shuttle bus that served this trailhead, so, of course, my parking paranoia was in high gear. I was happy to learn, then, that my son wanted to ride his downhill bike at Vail so I asked if I could get him to drop me off at the trailhead and pick me up when he was done biking. He agreed. He deposited me at the trailhead at 9:20 and said he’d be able to pick me up at 5:30 or 5:45. This seemed like an ideal plan. It should only take me about six hours to make the hike, giving me two or two and a half hours of free time. I would have a leisurely day!
Given that the trail climbs about three thousand feet in four and a half or five miles, I’d say this trail is, overall, a fairly steep trail. It’s not uniformly steep, of course. There are three or four stretches I’d call “steep”, connected by mellower sections of trail. The steepest of the steep sections is the first half mile of the trail, climbing six hundred feet above I-70 to where the roar of the highway can no longer be heard.
The trail passes through mixed forests of pine and spruce, wide grassy meadows, and groves of aspen. The meadows are filled with a rainbow of wildflowers and the buzzing of bees. The meadows provide open views of the surrounding terrain. The forest sections are seldom very dense, with forest floors carpeted with lush greenery. The trail is generally quite narrow and in some places passes through foliage that is shoulder-high.
I started my hike at almost the same time as a couple with a black dog. We passed each other three or four times over the first half of the hike. Each time we’d pass, the dog would bark and growl at me. We exchanged a few words each time we passed. Once, they said they weren’t liking the looks of the sky. On the drive up, Michael and I mentioned it too: it was mostly overcast. We hoped it would clear up as the day progressed.
On my last passing the couple and dog, it had just started raining. I said, “Time to put the raincoat on!” Their response was, “We’re turning around!” I continued up the trail, the rain increasing in intensity. It wasn’t long before the crack of thunder shook creation. I didn’t see the lightning, but it was clearly in my immediate vicinity.
Given the extent of the cloud cover, I had no sense that this squall would be short-lived. It could rain all day for all I knew. I’d been hiking a bit over two hours, so it would take me two hours or so to get back to the trailhead. If Michael was getting rained on, I didn’t know if he’d be wanting to call it quits or not. After a few more thunderbolts I decided to turn back.
This seemed like the correct choice. It was raining so hard, the trail was often a river. My hiking pants aren’t waterproof and although my raincoat kept my torso, arms, and head dry, I was soaked below the waist. Under the partial cover of a tree, I checked the phone. I had service! I texted Michael and gave him a situation report. He told me it wasn’t raining where he was. Trying to send a couple of text messages, I discovered how poorly phones work in the rain: I couldn’t unlock the phone with my fingerprint, and the touchscreen doesn’t handle water very well. The phone also helpfully informed me that “water or debris is in the USB port”.
After backtracking for about half an hour, and losing significant elevation, the rain lightened and finally stopped. I was in a large meadow that had a nice view to the south. I decided to have my picnic lunch here, sitting on a wet rock in a wet meadow. While I was there, I was passed by a number of hikers making their way down the trail. Some turned around before reaching the lake, others said they’d turned around within minutes of getting there.
While I ate, I pondered my situation. It had stopped raining but was still overcast. Would the rain return? Two hikers I chatted with told me about the shuttle. If I went back to the trailhead, I could take the shuttle into town and Michael’s day would be unaffected by mine. On the other hand, I was already halfway to the lake. Should I turn around again in an attempt to reach it?
I decided to try for the lake. I reckoned it would take me three hours to get from the lake back to the trailhead. If Michael was going to be there at 5:30, that meant I could leave the lake as late as 2:30. It was about 12:45. By 1:15 I was back to where I originally gave up. Surely I would be able to reach the lake in another hour.
By a bit after 1:30, I was catching up to a couple who had passed me when I was having my lunch. He was leading the way; she was slower. He’d stop and wait until she caught up to him, then start again, not giving her any breaks. I was just marginally faster than she was and it took me quite a while before I passed them. Along the way, I’d hear her asking him variations of “Are we there yet?” His answer was always a variation of “It won’t be long now.”
When I finally did pass them, at about 2:10, I asked him if he thought we’d reach the lake by 2:30, as that was when I figured I’d have to turn around. “Oh, yeah. It’s not more than 10 minutes away.” I think he had no real idea how much longer it would take and the “10 more minutes” was to reassure her. I’m not sure it worked.
I arrived at the lake at 2:29. Aargh! Time to go already. It had begun sprinkling again in the last few minutes before getting to the lake. I didn’t have time to take even a short break. I was heading back down the trail after staying there only nine minutes. The couple arrived just as I was leaving. It took them half an hour to hike the stretch he said it’d only take ten minutes to do.
Trailside Foliage
Nice spot for a picnic
Waterfall #1
Waterfall #2
Pitkin Lake pano
Lowering Skies #1
Lowering Skies #2
A few minutes below the lake, I was passed by two hikers I’d briefly chatted with when I was eating my lunch. When I first met them, I told them that I’d given up due to the thunderstorm. Passing me leaving the lake, they recognized me. “Glad you decided to make it to the lake after all!” I didn’t tell them how short a time I was actually there.
On the hike out, the sprinkling turned into full-on rain. It rained for a bit more than the first hour of my hike down. It wasn’t raining hard enough to turn the trail into a river, but it did make many of the water crossings more entertaining. The rain came and went, sometimes going away long enough for my pants to dry again. Then, I’d get to one of those narrow spots where the trail passed through shoulder-high vegetation and I’d get soaked again from all the water on the leaves.
When I returned to my earlier picnic location, I’d been hiking non-stop for about four hours. Okay, technically I stood still for about 30 seconds to take pictures. I stopped here for a short break and ate my peach. I don’t know what it is about eating a peach on a hike, but they always seem to taste so much better on the trail than in my house.
Michael texted me about this time asking for my ETA to the trailhead. I made a guess, but I wasn’t very confident about it. By now, the lifts had ceased operating and he had a little time to kill. I tried to pick up my pace.
Then I came across the nude guy. At first, I thought I was imagining. Did I really see a nude guy cross the trail ahead of me? A few yards later, there he was. Standing on the side of the trail, clutching his undershorts in both hands in front of him, covering his privates. Out of self-defense, I kept eye contact with him until I passed him. In spite of his nudity, he attempted conversation: “Did you get caught by the rain?” Normally, I’d stop and chat; tell him my story of the thunderstorm and my turning around, then being rained on for an hour on the hike out. Now, though? I answered him, “Sure did,” without slowing down.
A few minutes later, I-70 came into sight. I stopped to text Michael that I’d be at the trailhead in 15 minutes or so. Before I could get the phone out of my pocket, nude guy was right behind me. He wasn’t nude anymore, but I thought it was a bit creepy that he followed me so closely. I’d love to know what nude guy’s story was, but there was no way I was going to ask him.
I ended up back at the trailhead on the original schedule – between 5:30 and 5:45. Along the way, I managed to convert a hike with plenty of spare time into one where I had to hustle to be on schedule and changed a 9 or 10-mile hike into more like 12 or 13 miles. Oh well.
I really like this trail. I bet it’s beautiful when the aspen are turning. Heck, I’m sure it’s beautiful anytime it’s not raining! I wouldn’t rule out a return to this lake.
