{"id":6708,"date":"2024-07-22T13:40:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T19:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/?p=6708"},"modified":"2024-07-22T13:43:14","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T19:43:14","slug":"deluge-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/2024\/07\/deluge-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Deluge Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lake is reached via a trail that starts at the Gore Creek trailhead just east of Vail proper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

July 17, 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big thanks to the volunteers with the Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance for maintaining the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n