We stopped at a campsite along the 4-wheel drive road about a mile from the trailhead. Shannon set up the tent and our sleeping bags while I started the fire (we hadn't eaten dinner, yet). Starting the fire was a challenge because of all the precipitation we'd gotten. I had to break dead branches off of the lower parts of pine trees to get dry wood. It was also drizzling while I was working, making keeping the fire going even more challenging. I had planned on grilling burgers and baking potatoes. I knew the potatoes would take a while, so I placed them (in aluminum foil) on some flat rocks inside the fire ring as soon as I started the fire. Eventually, I moved them onto the coals to cook them faster. We were starving, so as soon as the burgers were finished, we pulled out the potatoes. We didn't have silverware, so we ate them like apples. Even though they hadn't quite cooked all the way through, they were delicious.
We woke up at 5 am the next morning to break camp and drive the last mile to the trailhead. When I got out of the tent, there was ice on the rain fly. There was also ice on my Jeep. The thermometer on my watch read 32° inside the tent. It was still dark as we drove to the trailhead, though by the time we got to it a little before 6.30 am, we didn't need headlamps to hike with. A little after 6.30, we were on our way up the mountain.
We'd chosen Huron partially because we'd read reviews of the climb that said it was a beautiful hike. And it lived up to our expectations. The trail was well built and not too difficult, and the views were amazing. Here's one of our first good views of the valley taken from near tree line.
You can see the Aspen were already pretty yellow. Most of them are yellow now and some have already lost all their leaves. Fall is pretty short at this elevation.
We also saw lots of wildlife on this hike. We saw a mule deer buck, but it was too far away for me to get good pictures of. We also saw three mule deer yearlings together. You can only see one in this picture. The other two blend in to the background pretty well (they're above the small bush in the center of the picture.
Above tree line, it became apparent that all the frost we thought we'd seen was more likely snow from the night before.
This small pond had a thin layer of ice on it from over night.
Most of the hike was pretty straight forward, until we got to were there was still packed snow on the trail. Apparently the upper portion of this trail keeps snow year round. We'd read trip reports were people mentioned wearing microspikes, but I didn't imagine there would be this much snow on the trail.
The last couple hundred vertical feet of the trail went through a rock/boulder field and required some very careful scrambling to navigate with the permanent snow on it. The fresh snow over night made the climb even more challenging and several icy spots required all four appendages to maneuver past.
After some careful climbing, we summited around 10 am. The weather on the summit was perfect. There was almost no wind and hardly a cloud in the sky. And though the temperature was close to freezing, the sun made it feel like it was 60 degrees.
We enjoyed the summit for over a half hour by ourselves (something rare on top of a 14er) before heading back down. We knew the climb down from the top would be even more challenging than the climb up, because the sun had softened the snow and ice. Despite the challenge, we made it through the rocky section and were able to enjoy the gorgeous views of the sunlit valley.
Here's a panorama I made from the summit. There are several more good ones on flickr.
After nearly 7 miles and 7 hours of hiking, we made it back to the Jeep and began the return trip to Silver Plume. We got our first good views of the valley on our drive back, since it had been dark when we arrived the night before.
There were several old mining camps in the valley, and two ghost towns with restored buildings.
We had originally planned on stopping at the ghost towns to look around, but most of the building are privately owned, and thus locked up tight with little more to explore than you could see from your car. That was a little disappointing.
We had seen evidence of beavers in the valley, and sure enough when we stopped to take pictures of a large beaver hutch, we saw three beavers swimming around! Unfortunately, you can't see the beavers well in any of our pictures.
We had a great time on our short trip and are planning on doing a fall colors trip soon. The rest of the pictures from this trip are on flickr.
No comments:
Post a Comment