After arriving late into Denver on Thursday night and speeding up Berthoud Pass to the Fraser Valley, I got a room at the YMCA of the Rockies Snow Mountain Ranch and just crashed.
Friday I awoke and gave myself a full day to acclimate to the altitude, as our definition of high-points in Wisconsin are small glacier kames that don’t surpass 1,000ft by a long shot. It was a day of catching up with old best friends and co-workers, making last-minute trips to the local gear shop in Fraser and a warm-up hike to the ranch’s waterfall trail. Later that night, my former boss and her husband hosted me for a glorious dinner at their home at Granby Ranch where I used to ski. Mary Ann and Andrew, I’m incredibly grateful for the two of you.
Saturday I was up at sunrise and packed my suitcase before heading to the YMCA's dining hall, where I devoured my last full hearty meal before heading to the backcountry. Let’s rewind for a second to right at dawn. While pulling together all of my gear, sprawled out over one of the two beds in my lodge room, I paused and reflected for a few minutes, determining if I were ready for what I was about to take on. When it comes to solo adventures, you can have all your homework and research done, be physically fit at the top of your regiment, and stockpiled with every piece of necessary outdoor gear possible…but if you aren’t ready then the trip is a wash. I ran through a series of affirming questions, checking to ensure I was confident, content, and capable once I arrived at the trailhead in an hour. Good to go. I pulled into Rocky Mountain National Park and drove about six miles into the park to the Baker/Bowen Trailhead. Truthfully, there isn’t a single location on earth that makes my heart stop and send chills up and down my entire body like Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s a tremendously important place to me for a lot of reasons and its quite possibly the most majestic place I’ve ever been to. It’s just so beautiful.
I strapped on my pack, weighing exactly how much I want it to (win), turned on my Spot GPS beacon, and headed down the dirt road towards the snow-covered and lodgepole pine littered Baker Gulch I’d be ascending. The goal for the first day was to get up to Parika Lake, located some six miles from the trailhead. This alpine lake sits above treeline at a whopping 11,371ft, and that’s where I’d be setting up camp for the night. The approach hike is gorgeous, leaving the national park and entering into the expansive Never Summer Wilderness area of the Arapaho National Forest. I signed-in at the trailhead logbook and kept pushing forward. The trail weaves its way up more than 2,000ft of elevation, through thick lodgepole pine forest, groves of tall aspen with their golden flickering leaves still attached.
At about three miles into the hike, I traversed a rocky talus field, where rusty pieces of mining equipment from hundreds of years ago lay between some of the boulders. The elevation continued to rise and when I reached the Grand Ditch, which parallels an old forest service road, I crossed a fallen tree and pushed north. As I trekked past the 10,000ft mark, it started snowing and the wind picked up. Suddenly, I entered a massive clearing, with hundreds of trees blown over in the same direction. Looking up at the towering unnamed 12,000+ mountain to the right, I noticed scarring from avalanche slides. Imagine all the snow flying down the peak and bashing into those trees. Wild. Almost eerie.
Crossing an iced-over stream, I reached the split for the Baker Pass/Parika Lake trails. I kept left and after a few minutes of marked trial, it disappeared completely into snow. I stopped, spinning my head around trying to make out where to go next. When you do enough hiking, you eventually learn what a trail looks like, geographically, so I pulled out my Garmin GPS which I had programmed the coordinates in for Parika Lake and got somewhat of a general bearing. The next ninety-minutes were exhausting and conditions becmae worse. Trudging through knee-deep snow, blind of any kind of trail, just guessing where a path may lay underneath the snow. The wind kept picking up and snow falling harder. It was steep hiking and at one point I entered a brief clearing in the woods and a nasty gust of wind blew down at me from my left, almost knocking me over. On a clear day, I could probably just look up and see either Parika Peak or Fairview Mountain and head in that direction towards the lake but now, visibility was next to none.
I just kept trusting my fairly-basic Garmin GPS and going with my instincts. It was kind of a precarious guessing game but I stayed confident the entire time. Finally, I approached what would be the base of a mountain that shot upwards and spotted a cairn. Relief. I reoriented myself with the GPS unit and eventually found the lake. Parika Lake is an alpine lake at 11,371ft sitting in the shadows of Parika Peak and Fairview Mountain that jut upwards from the northwest shore. It stopped snowing and blue skies started to emerge, and I found a place to set up my tent for the night. But the wind, the ferocious wind did not stop. I scrambled trying to find any not-frozen rock to throw inside my tent as I attempted to attach the outside rain fly. No one wants a tent flying away.
Once set-up, I hurried inside, blew up my insulated sleeping pad and tucked away into my down sleeping bag to try and warm myself, and seek shelter from the bitter wind. If I were to take a guess, the gusts were at least 40mph, every time just ramming into the side of my tent, almost blowing the whole thing over on top of me. But the Eurkea Taron2 kept me safe, cozy and protected from the elements.
I lit up my backpacking stove, boiled some water, and had dehydrated linguine pasta and veggies for dinner. A break in the nasty wind allowed me to get out of the tent, hang my food bag far away in a bush (stay away, you bears) and look around at the stunning scenery that is Parika Lake.
The water on the lake was flowing with the wind and I could look behind me and see peaks far off in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was like a dream. Front row seats to golden wash of alpenglow as the sun fell west. The wind’s rash picked up again and the night was spent by headlamp journaling and watching my tent violently shake. You could hear each punching gust, starting up at the nearby peaks, build and tumble down the mountain, skate across the frozen lake and then crash into the side of my tent.
Cheers,
At about three miles into the hike, I traversed a rocky talus field, where rusty pieces of mining equipment from hundreds of years ago lay between some of the boulders. The elevation continued to rise and when I reached the Grand Ditch, which parallels an old forest service road, I crossed a fallen tree and pushed north. As I trekked past the 10,000ft mark, it started snowing and the wind picked up. Suddenly, I entered a massive clearing, with hundreds of trees blown over in the same direction. Looking up at the towering unnamed 12,000+ mountain to the right, I noticed scarring from avalanche slides. Imagine all the snow flying down the peak and bashing into those trees. Wild. Almost eerie.
Crossing an iced-over stream, I reached the split for the Baker Pass/Parika Lake trails. I kept left and after a few minutes of marked trial, it disappeared completely into snow. I stopped, spinning my head around trying to make out where to go next. When you do enough hiking, you eventually learn what a trail looks like, geographically, so I pulled out my Garmin GPS which I had programmed the coordinates in for Parika Lake and got somewhat of a general bearing. The next ninety-minutes were exhausting and conditions becmae worse. Trudging through knee-deep snow, blind of any kind of trail, just guessing where a path may lay underneath the snow. The wind kept picking up and snow falling harder. It was steep hiking and at one point I entered a brief clearing in the woods and a nasty gust of wind blew down at me from my left, almost knocking me over. On a clear day, I could probably just look up and see either Parika Peak or Fairview Mountain and head in that direction towards the lake but now, visibility was next to none.
I just kept trusting my fairly-basic Garmin GPS and going with my instincts. It was kind of a precarious guessing game but I stayed confident the entire time. Finally, I approached what would be the base of a mountain that shot upwards and spotted a cairn. Relief. I reoriented myself with the GPS unit and eventually found the lake. Parika Lake is an alpine lake at 11,371ft sitting in the shadows of Parika Peak and Fairview Mountain that jut upwards from the northwest shore. It stopped snowing and blue skies started to emerge, and I found a place to set up my tent for the night. But the wind, the ferocious wind did not stop. I scrambled trying to find any not-frozen rock to throw inside my tent as I attempted to attach the outside rain fly. No one wants a tent flying away.
Once set-up, I hurried inside, blew up my insulated sleeping pad and tucked away into my down sleeping bag to try and warm myself, and seek shelter from the bitter wind. If I were to take a guess, the gusts were at least 40mph, every time just ramming into the side of my tent, almost blowing the whole thing over on top of me. But the Eurkea Taron2 kept me safe, cozy and protected from the elements.
I lit up my backpacking stove, boiled some water, and had dehydrated linguine pasta and veggies for dinner. A break in the nasty wind allowed me to get out of the tent, hang my food bag far away in a bush (stay away, you bears) and look around at the stunning scenery that is Parika Lake.
The water on the lake was flowing with the wind and I could look behind me and see peaks far off in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was like a dream. Front row seats to golden wash of alpenglow as the sun fell west. The wind’s rash picked up again and the night was spent by headlamp journaling and watching my tent violently shake. You could hear each punching gust, starting up at the nearby peaks, build and tumble down the mountain, skate across the frozen lake and then crash into the side of my tent.
Cheers,
Robby
