Aspen Fall

When we climbed Lone Cone in August, we drove by a trailhead for the Goat Creek Trail. We figured that was worthwhile to check out because it was so close to home. So we drove back up there. We parked right off the side of the road and started walking up an old dirt road. Immediately we knew the appeal of this trail was the multitude of beaver dams. It seemed every hundred feet there was a new dam. Trees all around us showed the scars of beaver chewing, but of course we never saw an actual beaver. There was so much hard work put into these dams that you had to respect the industrious beaver.

 The trail did not take us very far and soon it ran out. We vowed to keep following the creek even though we did not have a trail. It took us through underbrush and through the aspens until we ran into a fence. Here we were in the evergreens again. We walked around the fence until we found an opening. Here we made our way to a road

on private property, but that did not last for long. We crossed the creek again and found the best patch of aspens we saw the entire day. Really what you are after on a fall hike with Jacqueline is to see the pretty trees. We wandered amongst these, contemplated the thought of hitting a road far above us and making it a loop hike on some dirt roads. We thought better of it and came back the way we came. With only a couple hours out so far, we decided to continue driving and see what we could run into. 

About an hour drive got us to Beaver Park which was a pretty little area with excellent views. We found another trailhead which was the other side of the Lone Cone Trail we had taken a few weeks ago when we climbed Flat Top. We decided to hike it even though Jacqueline was not feeling to wonderful. She struggled the first part of the hike, but started feeling better after we got into it for a bit. The hike took us through many aspens and coniferous forests. We decided we could not go for too long and stopped after some cascades and a creek crossing. We knew from here it was a steep uphill climb and Jacqueline was just not feeling it on this day. We did not see much wildlife on this day, but we did see more than we saw humans. It was unbelievable to us just the quiet of these trails after running into so many people in Zion. Nope, for us on this day it was just the squirrels to keep us company. The walk out was pleasant as we headed downhill with ease. We enjoyed the bright yellows all around us that warned us we were in for some much chillier temperatures in future. A few days later, we realized why Jacqueline had not been feeling super well on the hike. She was pregnant! We were super excited that we were soon going to have a wonderful little one to come exploring with us in the future.

Taylor Park

We drove out for the weekend to see the Fords at their place in Taylor Park. Greg and I coached together for one season at Boulder High. Since then, we have become friends. We were only living about 3 hours away, so we left after school on Friday to drive to Taylor Park Reservoir where Greg and Fern have a house and a business that they run in the summer. The drive was longer than we expected as we ran into a bit of rain and cows on the road. We made it to their house a little after eight where they had dinner waiting for us. The house use to belong to Fern's mother. We visited with the Fords that evening. The next morning after breakfast, Greg and Fern took us to an abandoned old mine. 

This area was big mining country. There were so many pieces to this old mine being a place where ore was processed. We continued up the same road until we were forced to stop. Then we followed an abandoned road up from there. This took us through the trees until we eventually reached treeline. This was not hard to do being that Taylor Park was located at 9300 feet already. The seasons were short here and we could already begin to see the Aspen's changing on the slopes on the other side of the mountain. You could tell that we were all acclimated because no one had trouble with the elevation even though at one point we were walking on the Continental Divide Trail. 

Even Jacqueline was doing fine regardless of the fact that she was now a week pregnant (still unknown to us at this time) with our daughter Zyla. Our end goal on this day was an old mine. We could see it across the mountain and we eventually made our way up to it. It was rather interesting with old engines from a vehicle, tailing everywhere, and lots of old parts. You could tell that at some point in history this mine was rather productive. I believe it was a copper mine because we were able to find the turqouise colored rocks scattered about the scenery. We had lunch there and went up to the old mine entrance. 

We could not go in because it was long ago closed off. We were only a few hundred feet below the continental divide at this point, but that was not our goal on this day, so we headed down. Greg and Fern took us up the road a short ways to an old town call Tincup. They had a cabin there. This town was located above 10000 feet and was only accessible in summer and by snowmobile in the winter. It seemed like a very relaxing place where it would be easy to just kick back. From there we headed down the road to check out the reservoir and watch the fish jumping at the bottom of the dam. Back at their place for a night of hanging out and watching replays of UW's victory over USC. Go Huskies. We left the next morning to get prepared for the school week, but we sure had an enjoyable experience spending some time with the Fords in Taylor Park

Flat Top

When Jacqueline showed up in Norwood, we immediately made our way out for a hike that weekend. Unfortunately, our camera was out of battery so we did not get any pictures. We made our way high up into the mountains nearly to Navajo Lake from the Woods Lake Trailhead. It was a great hike where I was recovering from a cold. I got the sniffles when I climbed Mt. Sneffels. Lots of beauty, but no pictures. We went back out that same weekend thinking that we might want to return to get some good pictures. Instead, we decided to take another trail that left from the same trailhead. Strangely, this trail was named the Lone Cone Trail, but we were nowhere near Lone Cone Peak. 

Instead we were heading off in a direction that I was unsure about and so was my GPS as the trail was not on my map. It had rained the night before so everything was wet on the ground. Luckily we had a good trail that we figured must go somewhere, so we followed it. It lead us through a beautiful Aspen forest. In fact, much of the hike was enjoying the gorgeous Aspen trees that rose all around us. We came to junctions in the trail, but each time we took the one that went uphill. It soon began to climb steeply. When the trees finally opened up, we were able to get some excellent views. We were able to see right to the area that we were at a couple of days earlier as we were right above treeline along the peak that rose in the front of the range right behind it. 

We continued to climb until we came to a spot where our good trail changed into nearly non-existent with lots of trees down all around. We fought through the trees and then decided to forget the trail anyway as we were right on the saddle between some peaks. The peaks to our left were massive, but the one to the right was close. The name of the peak was Flat Top and while not a very exciting name, it still was a mountain with a name which to me made it seem interesting enough to climb. We began to head up through the trees. We followed the trees on the ridge for as long as we could until it turned to rock. Jacqueline started to get a little nervous with the loose rocks, but she did not have much time to get nervous, because almost immediately we popped out on the summit. We got some great views from this truly Flat Top Mountain. We could see Little Cone rising off to the south with a summit that looked fun and not too difficult to get up to. We could see our previous conquest Lone Cone to the west. We had great views all around us with a wind free and peaceful summit to enjoy. We could see mountains all around us that were yet to be climbed (by us that is). As we watched the afternoon thunderstorm clouds start to roll in, we quickly ate some lunch and wandered back down the trail. We ran into only one other person on this day and we were quickly learning that we were lucky to be in this beautiful area where many others were not lucky enough to be weekend warriors in. We took no detours on the way down; seeing the same scenery as on the way up just at a faster speed with a little less oxygen being inhaled. The only major wildlife sighting we got was in the campground where our car was parked. Rummaging through the camp hosts site, which was vacated that morning as we saw a speeding motorhome on the dirt road, was a porcupine. Jacqueline and I were both pretty stoked about it because we have seen tame porcupines, but never one that was wild together. For me, this was only the second one that I saw. It was a great hike on a late summer's day.