The Scene Begins

Day one started out with a 2.5 hour drive to the trailhead.  We got on the road at 06:00 with a long trip ahead of us.

Rio sez, let's get the show on the road

The plan was to drive two vehicles to the North Cottonwood Trailhead west of Buena Vista.  Then while the boys waited, we would shuttle another car over to the Denny Creek Trailhead where we would be coming out on Thursday afternoon.  It was only an 18 mile trip to arrange the shuttle, but it took a full hour because of the road conditions.  Needless to say, everyone was anxious to get on the trail by the time we made it back.

Chris, Ben, Malcolm, Tyler, Bryant, and Corbin

Our hike would be somewhere between 5 and 6 miles, with some good climbing in the second half.  We wanted to get as high as we could without going too far beyond treeline because of the threat of storms.  Our original plan was to camp at Bear Lake, but it was very exposed so we opted to stay just a bit lower.  This high camp would set us up nicely for the hike to the summit of Mt. Harvard the next morning.

Day one route

We shouldered the packs, which is always a wake-up call at the start of a trip, and headed down the trail.  It was easy going for the first mile and a half which made for a nice warmup.

Into the Wild

After that we crossed a river and got started on the climb.  Which is always another slap in the face on day one.  Oooof.  My legs were very tired, but I was happy they didn’t feel sore at all after running a 50 mile race two days prior.

Rest stop #1, getting ready for the big climb

After that, it was grind, rest, repeat.  Eventually we made it to treeline and decided to stop there due to the variable skies.

Last stream crossing before camp

We made it to our campsite a little earlier than planned because we stopped short, but this gave us plenty of time to hang out and explore the area.

Settling in to camp one

Shallow tarn near camp

We had a clear view of the morning’s objective behind our camp.  It looked close, but the summit was still 2.5 miles and 2,300 vertical feet away.

Filtering water below Mt. Harvard (to the rear right of center with the small patch of snow just below the summit)

String 'em up - setting up the bear bags

The clouds began to rapidly roll in later in the day and thunder rumbled up and down the canyons.  The next shot is one of my favorite ones of the whole trip.  It’s not that remarkable at first glance, until you see what the clouds are doing.  A huge wall of dark clouds was headed right for us, but Mt. Yale (another 14er across from us) saved the day.  Acting every bit of the upturned wedge that it is, the peak split the clouds in two as they rapidly moved our direction.  Keeping us in the tranquil wake for quite a while.  It was awesome!

Mt. Yale splitting the clouds

Things shifted after some time and we eventually did get a little rain.  Nothing very bad, though.  The worst of it missed us and dumped 3 inches on Breckenridge later that night.

Tyler and Malcolm finish dinner in the rain

A week long High Adventure Trek is somewhat of a tradition in the scouting program for boys that are in the 14-18 year age group and are part of a Venture Crew. Last year the focus for our group was to complete a 50 mile backpacking trip and earn their 50 mile patches along the way. We completed this with a trip through the Gore Range and the Eagle’s Nest Wilderness Area last July.

The scenery was spectacular and good times were had. The route was challenging and the days were long as we piled up the mileage on our Monday-Friday excursion. A different lake was our destination every night, and by front-loading the week with more miles we were able to enjoy a relaxed pace on the last two days with 7 miles each. Never going above treeline, and never setting foot in any snow.  Jokes were played, as in the time we suckered people into grabbing the knife for us that was (unbeknownst to them) attached to the log via its corkscrew. Ah, the laughs!

The Knife

The Boys

There was great scenery, and photo opportunities were plentiful.

Eagle's Nest Wilderness

Eagle's Nest Wilderness

Mirror Lake

And a legend came into existence:

So the boys thought it would be cool to come up with trail names for everyone. They were firing off one after another, but got stumped when it was my turn. They kicked around several ideas while hiking a ways up ahead and finally hit on that Eureka! moment – a perfect fit. They were so excited to tell me they had come up with one. As I approached them waiting at an intersection, I could tell they were eagerly awaiting my arrival. “We got one!”, they said. “The Agile Fox!”, another blurted out. According to various accounts, my reply was a dry and less-than-enthusiastic, “Oh, that’s gay.” And the legend was born. The Agile Fox would become the infamous nickname, and “OTG” became the default response to anything and everything. We got a lot of mileage out of that one!

Oh, that's gay.

For 2011 some things would be different. For starters, only 4 boys would be making the trip. This was a little disappointing at first, but the ones that were making the trip were all veterans of the year before. They are strong hikers that knew what they were doing so that opened up our adventure possibilities a little more.

Tyler

Corbin

Bryant

Malcolm

All year, we had coasted along under the assumption that we would head back up to the Gore Range and hit the highlights of last year’s trip while throwing in a couple of new-to-us lakes. Seemed like a reasonable plan… If not for the snow that dumped all winter long and then never melted.

With about a month to go prior to takeoff, we started to get more and more concerned that the Gore’s would be a no-go. The email chatter increased as various routes were proposed and links to recent reports of the conditions up there were shared among the group. I held out some hope before finally killing off the Gore idea after seeing Woody’s post about his Uneva Pass run with about a week before our planned departure.

Lost Lake - this would have been our lunch stop on day one, and it only got worse from there... (photo credit: Woody)

It was quite a scramble to come up with a new route on such short notice. I researched practically every other mountain range in Colorado, turning to 14ers.com to get the latest scoop on the conditions around the state. With that knowledge, I turned to my stack of Trails Illustrated maps and started to piece together route possibilities. Finally settling on a loop through the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area.

What the loop lacked in distance (the boys weren’t focused specifically on getting 50 miles this year), it more than made up for in terms of elevation gain and time spent above treeline. It also presented the opportunity to summit some 14,000′ peaks along the way. Hmmm.

Just like that, we were looking at 40+ miles of hiking, much of it with fully loaded packs over high mountain passes, and climbing as many as four 14ers during our trip. Ambitious? Yes. That’s why they call it High Adventure.

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