Mountain National Park for awhile now, at least ten years I've been
thinking about it, every time I looked at that part of the map I said
to myself, "Self, you need to do that!" Well, I finally got around to
doing it, and it was so worth it.
My friend John and I started at the Dunraven Trailhead Friday morning,
strapped on our ridiculously heavy packs (mine was 39 pounds without
the water) and headed in under a gorgeous clear blue sky with cool
early fall temperatures. One thing I noticed right off the bat were
the enormous amount of mushrooms popping up everywhere. It must have
been just ideal conditions for them, we were surrounded by a plethora
of fungus, everywhere you looked there was some new and weird looking
thing popping up out of the ground. I have a little digicam that I
can get 7 centimeters away from the subject so I've been experimenting
with "bugs eye" views of mushrooms, with some success, but its hit and
miss - tough light, tough angles.
Ten miles and a good 2,500 feet of elevation later we end up at Lost
Lake, near the headwaters of the north fork of the Big Thompson river.
I was exhausted - the reserve tanks empty, I was running on fumes.
We took some pictures of a stunning sunset that evening, reflections
of the trees in the lake were gorgeous. Lost lake is a destination in
and of itself, but we had bigger fish to fry the next day.
I didn't sleep well at all that night, we must have been right under
some central flyway for the jets, and a lot closer to them than in the
city. Once the jets stopped flying over the wind kicked up and blew
all night long. I doubt I slept more than 4 hours despite my
exhaustion. After breakfast the next morning we broke camp and headed
west, to the dreaded Icefield Pass. We got brief glimpse of it
earlier and it looked brutally steep. Getting closer to it, that
first glimpse proved correct, it was steep as hell. The satellite map
just doesn't do it justice, the topo lines didn't look that close
together. It was a slog up big blocks of talus at first, not bad, but
then it got to loose scree, insane steep, and all at 12,000 feet
elevation. We made it to the top though, that was the crux move, it
was all downhill from there.
We wandered around the alpine wilderness, taking in views that went on
for tens of miles. It was pretty hazy from smoke I'm guessing, god
knows where but it was thick. On the hike down from Mummy Pass to our
campsite we heard a couple of elk bugling, what a haunting sound.
Our campsite at Mummy creek was a dandy, big chunks of mushrooms
pushing up the dirt all around, with nice views of the Mummy mountains
to the south. I mixed up Orange Gatoraid and Everclear for the
cocktails (hey, it's lightweight) and enjoyed a nice relaxed buzz and
soaked in the scene. Life is good. An annoying song gets stuck in my
head, John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy". Oh well, maybe
paradise isn't all its cracked up to be.
That night it gets pretty cold, I have to cinch up my sleeping bag and
put my hat on, then I sleep like a baby for a good 8 hours at least.
John is already up and has a couple of cups of coffee in him before I
roll out of my tent. We take our time breaking camp and hiking back
to the car we have stashed, 90 miles by road for the twenty we've
walked. We get to the truck just as rain starts, and as we roll into
town it's cold and cloudy, people are wearing sweaters and it smells
like wood smoke. Summer is over, and I got one more good backpacking
trip in before the end.
