Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and Pikes Peak

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument & Pikes Peak
Monday, July 20, 2015

Today we drove down through the mountains to the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.  The direct route was on the interstate.  I thought the mountains would be more scenic.  They were, but it took a lot longer.  First, Google Maps did a bait and switch.  It gave me three options with the mountain route being the last.  I took it and we started off.  I was having some trouble getting the vehicle bluetooth audio working, so we pulled over.  When we pulled back out, we were on the interstate route, and Google Maps no longer showed the mountain route!  So we got to the mountains the old fashioned way with just the map.  Then we hit a four to five mile stretch in the steepest (15 degree) section with only a gravel road.  So instead of the 1.5 hour interstate route, we ended up taking about 2.5 hours to get there.

The fossil beds were created by a volcanic eruption around 35 million years ago.  The lava/mud flow wiped out a large redwood forest, and today the huge, fossilized stumps of the redwoods can be seen on about a 1 mile hike.  You also see lots of plant, insect and small animal fossils in the visitor center.  And of course the usual short video.  Rainstorms were threatening so we didn't try the longer hikes.

Here's a couple of maps of the national monument.

And here are some shots of the fossilized redwoods.

The very large stump two shots above was actually located behind a lodge many years ago.  They positioned the lodge so people would have to pay to see the stump.  The lodge isn't there any more.

At the end of the valley, there's a homestead that was created about 1872 by a single mother, the Hornbeck Homestead.  Here are some shots of the homestead.

On the way back, we passed Pikes Peak.  My wife had talked about going, so we drove up.  We expected the toll to be a few dollars.  It was $12/person.  The car in front of us had kids, and they turned around.

It was a 19 mile drive.  We didn't do the planning, so we didn't really have the choice of taking the cog train up to the peak.  The threatening clouds were getting bad, so we didn't stop on the way up.  Here's a map of the route.

We did see some bighorn sheep.  They seemed to be licking up some liquid I think a driver tossed out.

We didn't get into the clouds until a couple of hundred feet from the top.  At the top it was 39 F, windy, and somewhat dark.  Since we hadn't planned to drive up, we just had wind shirts.  It was cold!  Here's some shots at the top.

As soon as we started down, it started to rain.  With the steep switchbacks, it seemed pretty slick.  My wife was driving, so we went down pretty slowly--though I would have driven slowly too.  Just below the peak, the rangers were stopping cars from coming up, and turning them around.  We later found they were stopping cars about 5 miles down too.  We pulled over to let one tail-gaiter go by, and a ranger pulled up next to us and told us to slowly make our way down.  I did get a couple of shots on the way down.  Here is one.

The drive back was pretty bland with some sprinkles.  I enjoyed the fossil beds, and they would be good for a light day's activity.  Pikes Peak is an interesting drive, a little expensive for views you could get backpacking.  But don't go in bad weather!

Have a good day.

Crag Crest Trail and Mesa Lakes, Grand Mesa CO

Crag Crest Trail, Grand Mesa CO
Friday, July 17, 2015
Mesa Lakes [Resort]
Saturday, July 18, 2015

After we broke down our tents on Friday morning at Saddlehorn campground, we drove east to the Grand Mesa area just east of Palisade.  I had reserved a cabin for the five of us Friday night so we could hike longer and put off the 4+ hour drive to Denver till Saturday morning. The plan was for the guys to hike the 10.5 mile Crag Crest Trail while the ladies finished up their town visit.

Today's hike went much better than the Rattlesnake Arches attempt yesterday.  The Crag Crest Trail is a national scenic trail, much better marked, and in a very different ecological area.  This trail has lots of trees except on the 11,200' crest.  It also has lots of lakes.  Here's the track for today's hike.

We started at the west trail head, which adds a 1/2 mile to get to the loop.  We then went clockwise, climbing to the crest and along it in the morning.  Here are some shots that include my brother-in-law and nephew.

The trail wound down through a boulder field when descending on the east end of the loop, and we stopped for lunch at the lake just down from the crest.

It was a leisurely day, with my nephew having lots of fun on the trail.  The lower (10,400'-10,600') trail back to the trail head was mostly meadows and forests, close to several lakes.  There were also several sections of uniform blow-down that looked like micro-cells had hit in the past.  But I didn't take any shots of those.

Here are a couple of shots from the lower half of the trail, including one where the clouds are clearly reflected in a calm lake.

This was a fantastic hike.  The crest part of the trail was long and unique (in my limited experience).  And it's a nice doable hike with minimal stress.  We got a few minutes of light rain on the crest, but it quickly cleared up.  It looks like the east (I would have called it south) trail head is near a campground and a lake with boating and swimming.  It seems a nice option for those staying overnight.

But I had reserved a cabin at Mesa Lakes Resort earlier, so we joined the ladies at the Avalanche Grill at the Powderhorn Ski Resort for dinner (only one open after 5:00 pm), then headed to the cabin.

The next morning, I got up and walked around the lakes (at 6:45 am).  Then my nephew wanted to walk around too.  So I went twice.  Here are some shots.  My nephew was in shorts, t-shirt, wind shirt, and blanket!  It was cool, but not cold.

That's about it for the Grand Junction area and this part of the trip.  After breakfast at the lodge, we headed back to Denver.  Have a good day!

Colorado National Monument and Rattlesnake Arches Trail

Colorado National Monument & the Rattlesnake Arches Trail
Thursday, July 16, 2015

My wife, I, and my sister went out to Palisade, CO on Tuesday the 15th.  My wife and sister were planning to do the wine country tours the next couple of days in Palisade, which has 20 wineries.  My brother-in-law and nephew were going to join us on Wednesday, and the three of use were planning to camp and hike for a couple of days.  Palisade is just a few miles from Grand Junction, Fruita, and the Colorado National Monument.  Except for the monument, most of the land around this area seems to be forest service.  In this and the next post, you will see some of the hiking opportunities.

I stayed with the ladies for some wine tasting Tuesday afternoon.  Then on Wednesday, we went to the Mesa County Fair in Grand Junction.  It was a nice fair with the usual 4-H exhibits, animals, food, entertainment and rides.

When the guys arrived, around 4:00 pm on Wednesday, we took off to set up our tents in Saddlehorn campground in the Colorado National Monument.  The plan was to do that quickly, then return for the tractor pull at the fair.  Alas, we encountered some difficulties.  The campground was just south of Fruita and took about 35 minutes to get to.  Our site wasn't flat!  But we couldn't find the host to try and change sites.  I had paid early for a two-day reservation, and didn't want to lose my deposit.  So we set up our tents on the least sloped areas.  But it was mostly rock with a little sand.  So no staking.  I found rocks to pile on my stakes that seemed good enough.  But the wind came up while we were setting up, pretty strong, and caused us to use more anchors than our initial set.  Then a rainstorm came in while we were only half through setting up.  It didn't stop.

We ended up driving into town to eat.  We were a little too late to see the tractor pull, and we weren't sure it would even be held in the rain and lightning storm that continued till about 8:00 pm.  Here's a shot of my tent showing some of the rocks I used to stake it out.

The next morning, we got an early start for the 15.5 mile hike on the Rattlesnake Arches Trail.  The trail head is just north of the Monument very close to the Colorado River.  This was the first time for all of us for hiking in this terrain.  The blogs I had read indicated no water (correct), a little bit of climbing, and a long hot day.  In my opinion, they were only partially correct.

There are a couple of trail heads.  The one closest to the seven arches requires a high-clearance, four wheel drive vehicle.  We didn't have one of those, so we took the long way in.

My expectation was a clearly marked trail with lots of ups and downs.  I had a one-page printed topo map, my inReach Explorer for track logging, and my iPhone set up with Gaia Pro and a downloaded GPX track of the trail.  This was my first time using Gaia Pro while hiking, I've been using other apps.  Gaia wouldn't access the GPS receiver in airplane mode.  I had to turn off airplane mode every time I wanted to see our position.  That ate battery like mad.  Worse, I had inadvertently left the cellular radio on the night before and I was starting with only 62% battery.  To save battery, we checked our position with Gaia only once in a while.

That turned out to be a bad approach to this trail.  Many of the downs seemed to be down steep canyon walls.  And there were only the occasional cairn to show the way for those descents.  Plus, people had set up cairns for other 'trails' and there were other paths that looked as widely used as the trail to the arches.  We had trouble staying on the trail soon after the human/horse trail options split.  We didn't take the horse trail option (said to be more scenic but longer), which turned out to be a bad mistake.

The first steep descent was marked with cairns.  Looking down the canyon sides, it looked like more cairns followed a slip rock ledge around the canyon down a ways.  It looked dangerous.  And a trail continued around the top edge of the canyon.  We followed the trail.  What we found on the return was that the descent actually doubled back on a reasonable climb down.  But we didn't see that.  We took the path along the top until we found a place to descend at the head of the canyon (bushwhacking).  It was fun, but hot, tiring, and time consuming.  Here's the plot of our whole day's walk.

The trail head was in the upper right corner, near the river.  The section where the trail diverges shows our bushwhack on the way out, and the real trail on the way back.

Our furthest point out was following cairns and a path that was quickly diverging from the real trail.  When we finally checked Gaia, and walked back to where we had left the trail, we found a steep descent.  I figure this is where the blogger estimated 3.5+ climbing down.  I'm not real comfortable with heights, and I had a heavy (25 lb) pack for training.  Plus, it was now 1:30 pm, and if we continued to the arches, we would have only been 1/3 through the whole trail.  I recommended we abort and perhaps take some short hikes in the Monument for the rest of the evening.  We did stick to the trail on the way back.  And I got back with 7% iPhone battery.  We got to the trail head around 4:00 pm.  I should also mention, my nephew is 12.  So we didn't go too fast, mainly to allow him time to have fun on the trail.

The scenery is fantastic.  Here are some shots from the trail that include my brother-in-law and nephew.

We also saw a collared lizard (?) with bright colors.

The Colorado National Monument has some very impressive canyons, monuments and landscape.  Plus some bighorn sheep along the road.  We brought the ladies out and drove them along Rimrock Drive until about 7:20 pm.  Here's a map of the monument and the drive.

And here are some shots of the canyons and monuments on the drive.

I wanted to highlight the content of this next shot.  They said it looks like a mummy.  To me, more like a sarcophagus.  Also, just a few feet walk around the rim, you come to an echo area.  The echos are fantastic and there seems to be little signal loss in the return.

The next two shots of sheep were taken earlier with my iPhone, so the quality isn't as good.

I would highly recommend both the drive and the hike to anyone in this area.  If I get a chance, I would like to try the Rattlesnake Arches Trail again, this time taking the horse trail option.  :-)

Have a good day!