We don't do a lot of backpacking, but we've been trying to get in one short trip each summer so we don't forget how it works. This year we spent a few days in the Collegiate Peaks. We left home early the morning of the 30 July, and drove to the North Cottonwood Trailhead, which was straight west of Buena Vista, CO. The road to the trailhead was rough and steep, and our little Kia Soul, stuffed with a few days worth of backpacking gear, had a little trouble getting up the loose, steep scree that composed the road. But we made it, only once having to back up and try again.
We'd packed for three days, but only had a general plan was of following the Kroenke Lake Trail west into the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness and camping somewhere nice. I hoped to camp near the Continental Divide where we could spend a couple of days exploring above timberline, hiking up to a couple of areas passes. If you're looking at a map, the trail we were on is in the valley just north of Mount Yale.
We'd gotten a new pack, and Quinn decided it was his. It was probably just a little too big for him at that time, but he's since grown a couple of inches. Next summer, if we do this again, it will be Abbey's turn for a new pack. Hers is a little too small.
Below is a picture of Kroenke Lake. There were some good camping spots around the lake, but the mosquitoes were thick, and the other campers weren't thin.
We could see on the map that there was a bench of sorts a few hundred feet above Kroenke Lake, and thought there might be some camping opportunities up there. It was a steep climb up to the bench, and although we'd only walked about 4 miles, we were getting tired. We found a couple of nice camping spots on the bench, and set up camp. That night there was thunderstorms in the distance in the valley below us. We sat on our bench and watched distant lightning, hoping it wouldn't come our way.
The next morning we set out to climb up to the Continental Divide. We had to cross a few snow fields to get there, and the wind was really strong when we reached the top. We'd planned to follow the trail along the divide to the next pass, but even though it was only 11 a.m., there were some dangerous looking cloud popping up, and we didn't want to add our names to this year's list of lightning victims, so we turned back. There was never any lightning, but we spent much of the rest of the day waiting out rain showers in our camp. We got out once to climb the boulder field behind our camp, but ended up getting sent back down by rain and snow. I was concerned about broken legs as we scrambled over slippery, wet Kia-sized boulders.
On the morning of the third day we had a nice breakfast in our rocky kitchen on the bench before packing up and heading back to the trailhead.
It was a pretty good trip, but might have been a little more interesting if we'd planned another day or two with a little more traveling and a little less time spent above 12,000 feet waiting out the rain.
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