The Cache la Poudre Idea [1: Friday July 23, 2010]

This blog will cover my annual back-country trips in the Colorado wilderness and parks, mainly in the alpine country, but I'll probably visit other areas in the state in the years ahead.  In between the annual trips I'll make occasional postings of past trips in various wilderness areas.  The idea is to provide some ideas for trips to others, as well as post some of the pictures taken in these amazing areas.

I usually backpack in alpine areas, requiring us to climb up to high altitude, about 3 to 10 miles in a days hike.  It makes me very tired, but I get invigorated by the amazing sites and places we encounter at these beautiful places.  This year, 2010, we decided to do something different.  The Cache la Poudre River always fascinated me and for some reason we decided to hike there instead of exerting ourselves up some huge mountain.  Our original plan was to start at the very beginning of the river on the continental divide - Milner Pass - and take 4 days and 3 nights hiking down the Poudre all the way to the Big South campground at highway 14.  Upon researching this trip we would have to cross the Poudre River where the Big South portion starts, and literally walk across it since an old foot-bridge washed away sometime in the 90's. However, our plans changed and we cut one day off the trip and we changed the starting and ending points.  We start at the Chapin Pass area off Fall River Pass road and end at the Corral Creek trailhead near Long Draw Reservoir; two nights camping at two different campsites - site #1 called Cache, near the confluence of the Poudre and Chapin Creek.  Site #2, called Flatiron, lies at the end of an un-improved trail along Hague Creek.  Both places provided the potential for good ol' wilderness isolation.

Sign at the trailhead to Chapin Pass.  Here we go down the mountain to the valley

  We started on Friday, July 23, 2010, on a beautiful and clear morning.  The elevation at the trailhead was 11,400 feet and we dropped down to around 10,200 feet along the Chapin Creek.  The drop is steep, maybe a mile long.  It dumps us in to the broad meadow covering the valley floor and upon entry we watched the dew glisten on the willow bushes.  Coupled with the slight breeze, the twinkling sparks projected an image unmatched anywhere else.

We hiked over lots of squishy, muddy marsh, literally sheets of water flowing to Chapin Creek.  Some nice "trails" are found, cutting along the valley, parallel to the creek.  This section is marked as "cross-country" travel, no maintained trails, but we find obvious pathways and follow the natural flow down the valley.  This requires crossing fields, avoiding willow pockets whenever possible.  It's gorgeous out here, filled with sunshine and warmth.  We reach the area near the Cache la Poudre River and Chapin Creek confluence, where the two big valleys meet, lots of big open space.  The Chapin campground is passed, tucked in the forest on the east side of the Chapin.

To reach our destination for the day we cross the Chapin Creek foot-bridge, walk along this cool moraine - dry grass, sparse trees, rocks poking out of the sandy ground - and eventually find the bridge to cross over the Poudre.  The Cache campsite is a little bit upriver from the bridge, tucked in the lodgepole trees but very close to the River.  The Poudre hugs this side of the broad valley for quite some distance up and down from the campsite.  A word of caution here: the official Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) campsite is in a grove of beetle killed pines.  Not a place we want to sleep during some high winds.

Later I'll continue this journey and will now leave with some pictures to view:

This is the view from the Cache campsite.  This river can be walked in and in fact is quite invigorating.

This is the view looking down from Cache.  Notice the beetle-kill on the close ridge-line to the left and the pocket of lodgepoles straight on down.  There is a significant amount of dead trees in the area.

The view up the valley from Cache.  You can see a long way and if you walk up here and climb over a rise you end up seeing more valley and another rise.  It seems like it goes on for infinity.

Climbing up the Poudre and looking back we see some nice sky and mountains.  I think these are the Desolation Peaks.  On the other side of these isolated mountains is some beautiful alpine scenery.