Tony and I had SO much fun on our trip to Colorado. After my last day with the boys, I picked Tony up at the house and we headed straight to the airport. Our flight was delayed half an hour so we had just enough time to get a yummy Papa's burger before we took off. We got to CO around 9pm and spent the evening hanging out with my parents and planning out our backpacking trip for the next day (by planning I mean Tony and my dad looked over maps and planned out our trip, I just hung out haha).
We got up the next morning and drove about 3 hours out to San Isabel National Forest. My dad had warned us that the whole state had been getting afternoon showers just about every day, so he made sure to send us off with rain gear. Once we got to the trail head we put on our packs, walked about 10 feet from the car and it started POURING. Since we didn't have our rain gear out yet, we ran back to the car and jumped in just as the hail started. We ended up waiting out the hail/ rain for about 15 minutes. Once it died down, we pulled out the rain gear, loaded up with our packs, and started our hike. Within 5 minutes my legs were on fire and I thought there was no way I was possibly going to make it. Turns out hiking uphill with a 28 pound pack on your back is not quite the same as hiking a flat trail in Houston! hehe. We hiked up the first incline, then continued off on the path. The whole time we were hiking there was a pretty steady heavy drizzle and we kept commenting that the trail was much more difficult to manovur than my dad had said. The trail was no more than 12 inches wide, there was brush scratching your skin the whole way, and it was very windy and up and down. We went on like this for awhile, stopping once for lunch and to wait out some heavy rain under a tree, then continued on for about 2 1/2 hours.
All of a sudden our tiny trail opened up into a large clearing, and the trail disappeared (luckily, the rain disappeared at this point as well)! We put our packs down to take a break and wandered around the clearing for about 30 minutes trying to find the trail, but it was no where to be found. Tony got out our maps and started triangulating our position; good thing I had an expert navigator with me otherwise this would have been the time to panic! Based on the position of the mountains, and our proximity to the river, Tony was able to pinpoint exactly where we were. He finally looked at me and explained "the trail is gone and I'm not sure why, but we're here (points to map), and we need to get here (points again) to where the two trails merge. We need to go that way (points which direction to go) so we have two choices: we can camp here all weekend, or you can trust me not to get you lost and follow me". I told him I trusted him and would follow him, so we got our packs back on. Right at this moment we heard voices coming up over the ridge in front of us! Turns out, Tony was exactly right with his navigating. The people were coming from exactly the way he had pointed! He's so smart hehe. We ended up having to truck it up an extremely steep hill (I was literally crawling up it at one point) but once we reached the top we were on a large, clearly marked trail (which was what my dad had said the whole trail would be like). We hiked on for about an hour more, and then stopped to set up camp for the night.
While we were setting up camp (and I was trying to dry out my shoes by the fire since Tony made me truck it through a stream!), a large group passed by with 2 llamas! I stopped and talked to the two guide girls and they let me take pictures of the llamas. Apparently they can carry up to 80 pounds so they are great to take on long hikes. Who knew?!? I thought they were pretty cool! As soon as we got our fire going and camp set up, it started to POUR again so we quickly hopped in the tent and waited out the rain for about half an hour. It ended up clearing up and we were able to restart the fire and spent the evening cooking, hanging out, and looking at stars.
The next morning we fixed breakfast then started off on a day hike to a lake my dad had recommended we see. This was the hardest hike I have ever been on! It was 4 miles to the lake and completely uphill. The whole trail was rocky, and really quite steep! Each time we would start up a huge incline I would motivate myself to keep moving with the hope that the lake was right at the top. Each time we got to the top of a hill, it would be followed by another hill. This went on for hours! FINALLY, just as I was about to give up, we made it to the lake! We set up my hammock, ate some lunch, and took a nap. It was so chilly by the lake as we had hiked up to about 12,000 feet (we started at 9,000ft). After the nap we hiked back to camp, packed up, and moved to a campsite a little closer to the trailhead to make the next day's hike a little shorter. We had a short rainstorm that evening, which gave me a great excuse to take a nap in the tent, then made a fire, ate, and overall had a nice evening.
On Sunday we woke up, made breakfast, then packed up camp to head back to the car. We started hiking and when we got to the place we had trucked it up that huge hill we commented that we were interested to see where the trail we were on met up with the trail we took that first day. We wondered how we had missed the trail so we were tracking on my phone to see where the trail met. Well, we kept hiking and hiking and hiking and finally realized that the two trails did not actually meet. The trail we were on was steep, but was well marked and much more like what my dad had mentioned. When we got to the end of the trail we came across this:
turns out, after that very first incline we hiked the first day, we crossed right over these sticks and followed something that was NOT the trail at all for 3 hours rather than go on the actual trail, which did a 180 turn and zig zagged up to the top of the ridge. hahahaha! We quite literally hiked off the trail the ENTIRE way!! We think we must have been on some type of game trail, because it was an actual trail of some sort, but not the one that has been cleared out for people to hike. So while we were hiking down in the riverbed the first day, we should have been hiking up on the ridge. Too freaking funny! We got a lot more than we bargained for, for sure! Looking back at our maps there was no way to have known because our trial literally paralleled the real trail, they were just 100 yards apart (though one was at a higher elevation). At least Tony knew he was supposed to be following the river, otherwise we could have been lost in the mountains!
When we got back to the house we got out my camera to look at all the pictures. We got to the second picture I took of the day and laughed out loud:
look familiar?!?! this is how we missed the 180 degree turn. We hiked up the first incline, were tired and took a break on this rock, then because we were sitting we didnt notice the trail turned behind us and just got up and continued down the trail straight ahead. Unbelievable. My dad laughed at us when we told him the story. Heck, I'm still laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.
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