Colorado Annual Backcountry: August 2011

After sleeping peacefully under the stars I woke up nice and early and looked at the lake noticing an abundance of feeding fish. The lake has lots of greenback cutthroat trout and is quite popular with fishermen. We watched this one guy fishing for a little while, pulling out one after the other. There is information available about the fishing with this document as a start. It was a bright and warm morning, perfect for getting ready to leave, unfortunately. It certainly looked like a good area to explore. I could see all sort of routes to travel as mentioned before where you could reach the ridges up high and walk them towards the continental divide. Since we had to leave by noon the hike to Skyscraper reservoir appealed to us. The cutthroats in Woodland were a decent size, like 10 inches, but we heard rumors the fish were bigger at Skyscraper, so we hoped to catch a glimpse.

The hike is short to Skyscraper from Woodland, maybe one half a mile at most. A few hundred feet gained in elevation, crossing some snowfields, listening to more gurgling water. It doesn't get any better than this. The lake, I keep calling it a lake, is dammed at the outlet, an approximately 20 foot high cement dam forming the lake, complete with spillway. Above the lake massive snowfields swoop upwards to the peaks and pass we can see to the south. It looks like one of those postcards you can buy in Boulder to send to your friends only we can take the pictures ourselves in real-time. You'll really enjoy this view, I swear.

Ultimately we had to leave and walked the six miles out of the woods. I managed to take a look at a huge jet of water spewing out over a large boulder, knowing as I watch this rock is slowly getting reduced to rubble. It sounded like a jet. And it was very cool with the spray hitting my face. A nice to way to cap off the trip, especially since I was heading back down to the 95+ degree weather. Oh well, maybe one more trip this year and for sure next year. Enjoy the pictures and if you decide to go here you won't regret it. Well worth the hike up.


Woodland in the morning. The trout are ravenous.


Love these snowfields. And the blue sky.

And here it is, the star of our show....the Greenback Cutthroat

The Sentinels of the Tundra

And did I mention the massive snowfields all over the place?

An old train trestle close to Rollins Pass. You can see this on the way to Skyscraper Reservoir

And this is one reason why I go up to these places!

Woodland Lake from Skyscraper Reservoir

The Spillway

And there you have it. Happy trails to you all and enjoy the wilds!

This year I didn't get a chance to take a multi-day backpack but did manage an over-nighter close by home. I went to Woodland Lake in the Hessie area in Indian Peaks Wilderness Area, in Colorado. This was a real nice hike, starting on Friday July 29th, 2011. The weather was getting hot there in the flatlands so it was perfect timing as the day was sunny filled with those puffy white clouds. The best thing about the sky was it didn't rain that day and it had been like clockwork in the afternoons for about a week. If you hadn't heard, the winter snow was sort of legendary this year, with abundant snowfall and a very cloudy spring, producing about 200% snowpack by the time summer rolled around. To this day there is tons of snow up there and the drainages are all showing it by gushing loudly and showing off their generous volume.

This is Jasper creek on the way up the mountain

It's a good hike starting out at the Hessie trailhead by the beginning of the 4th of July road. Actually, this is the parking area. Two things: a) If you have beefy 4wd you can drive on through the water another half mile or so to a nice shaded parking area. Then the real trailhead is about 1 to 1.5 miles from here. b) If you can't drive this portion, and most folks can't, you get there early or you end up along the road and walk a little farther. Assume you park on the road, so it's about 2 miles to the real Hessie trailhead. It's a nice walk there, passing the old Hessie town-site. Nice views, nice aspens, basically a nice but of land to walk through. You enter the Jasper creek valley and from the Hessie trailhead, the real one, it's 4 miles to Woodland Lake. Here the water is really roaring and the real hike begins. You tend to break away from the crowd of people.

It's about 2 miles up this valley then left up the Woodland creek valley in which the first mile was the steepest climb, about 800+ feet in a mile or less. Overall I think it's 6 miles from the car and about 2,000 feet of elevation gain. We started at 9,000 feet and end up just under 11,000 feet at the lake. We spooked a small herd of elk about half a mile from the lake, that was really cool. And the lake itself was so refreshing. It's about 65 degrees, not 90+ back at home, sunny and calm. And we brought up some cans of Fat Tire and put them in the snowfield behind our camp - most ground was dry but there were huge visible snowfields everywhere!

Woodland lake in the afternoon

This lake has a bunch of fish. It's a popular place for a weekend as three more parties made their way up here. It's steep terrain as the forest slopes right on down to the lake, but we all managed to be camped far enough away to keep things isolated. I mean we're about a 90 minute drive from Denver and from up here you wouldn't know it. And did I mention there is snow everywhere?

There is snow low and there is snow high. Makes for nice cool breezes when you stand nearby

The area has some nice hiking. We walked around the lake before dinner. You can walk to Skyscraper Reservoir, just a short walk up the trail. There are other areas to explore here, just follow a drainage upward and before you know it you're in a boulder field or tundra. And of course, bright white snowfields to cross!

I was able to sleep under the stars and with a new moon it was amazing. I saw so many stars I lost track of some popular constellations. The Milky Way was a bright cloud in the sky and later in the evening, or rather, early in the morning I witnessed the Mars-rise. It was this huge bright star, like as bright as Venus normally appears in the morning or evening. I would walk now and then and track its movement across the sky, very cool indeed. I thought about how crazy it is at home with all the light pollution, where not far away I saw so many stars it was mind boggling. Enjoy these pictures and later I'll wrap up with another entry about the short hike to Skyscraper.