January 2020 backpacking trip is in the books!
One of my 2020 goals is to do at least an overnight backpacking trip each month of the year. Time flies when you’re not paying attention and before you know it, it’s already hunting season and you’ve only been in the woods once.
I’ve had my eye on something close, as in Brainard Lake or RMNP, but the winds on the east side of the Divide had been wicked the last 2 months, so I landed on the Lost Creek Wilderness again. A group from 14ers.com posted a trip report for Bison Peak the weekend prior and the conditions they reported sounded great: solid trench all the way to the Bison Arm and then slight flotation required.
Eager for an epic January excursion I headed out at around 9a on Saturday morning and made the 2 hour drive down to the Ute Creek TH near Tarryall Reservoir. The wind along US285 was intense and there was a lot of snow blown across CO77 heading east of Jefferson, but the mountains didn’t look like they had received much snow recently.
After gearing up and locking up the 4Runner I departed the Ute Creek TH around 11:30a and realized I had forgotten my microspikes at home. Oh, well. I had snowshoes and at least I didn’t forget the water bottles like the last time I hiked this God forsaken trail. It turned out that I really didn’t need any traction after all. It took me about 2 hours to make it up the Ute Creek trail to the Brookside McCurdy trail without snowshoes or traction. Conditions were a mix of dirt and pretty solid snow trench. It was pretty clear that people have been coming up this trail for a while. The weather was cold and calm , but slogging uphill with a 35 lb winter pack kept me quite toasty.
My initial plan was to get to the plateau at the base of Bison Peak, find a sheltered spot behind the massive rock formations, and set up camp. If the weather held up and I was early enough to camp I figured I might even summit Bison. Unfortunately I had to don snowshoes at the Brookside McCurdy trail intersection and that really slowed things down. To make matters worse I started noticing really dark snow clouds blowing in from the west over the Mosquito/Ten Mile Range and Breckenridge. This really impacted the views from the lookout point in the video below and I figured it wouldn’t be worthwhile to continue further because a campsite up there would be way more exposed. At this point it was around 3p and I figured I’d head back down the trail about a half mile and set up camp at a nice sheltered spot that appeared to have a ton of dead wood above snow.
I don’t have many photos or any video from when I was setting up camp because it started snowing and the temperature started dropping rapidly. There was around 18-24” of really powdery snow in camp, so it was quite the chore to pack down the tent area with snow shoes. I then set around 6 deadman anchors and laid out the MLD Duomid.
Normally I don’t like campfires. They’re a pain to fuel in the backcountry and you end up smelling like smoke for weeks. They’re also not very LNT. Tonight was an exception. There was a ton of readily available fuel and it was getting cold. Like really cold. Forecast was supposed to be -5 F at 9k ft and I was at 11.5k ft. Campfire was on the menu and it lit with a single match. Woo-hoo!
The fire was great. It made dinner/snow melt time so much more enjoyable and the abundant fuel supply made it pretty darn easy. I will say I’m thrilled that the Silky folding saw I brought worked wonderfully. I snapped off the tip of the blade, but it still quickly cut pieces off the big downed trees nearby.
This was the first time I brought NyQuil with me and that was an epic fail. I think I just need to accept the fact that sleeping outside at 11k+ feet just doesn’t happen. That said, I stayed pretty warm under the Katabtic Palisade and MLD Spirit 28 quilt combo, but I just kept tossing and turning. It didn’t help that my right knee and hip still had massive road rash and bruising from my cycling crash the weekend prior. That made lying on my right side incredibly uncomfortable. I think I just need to accept the fact that I’m probably not going to sleep well (if at all). Like I said, I stayed warm, but it snowed almost all night and I could definitely tell it was cold outside. The frost hoar inside my single-wall, floor-less tent was intense. It was supposed to drop to negative single digits and I’m fairly confident it did.
When I finally peeked out at around 7a there was about an inch of snow on the tent. Unfortunately I had forgotten to put my trail runners and water bottles under my quilts and they were frozen solid. I had no idea my trail runners could freeze like blocks of ice, but they did. It took a good 5 minutes each to put them on later that morning. When it’s this cold outside every task is a bear. Making breakfast on the Snowpeak (ironic name, eh?) Litemax stove was tough. The “Bob Moulder” strip (copper wire I pounded down to heat the canister) was only mildly effective and the flame was so timid I was worried I wouldn’t be able to melt snow for my oatmeal. Eventually I was able to get it rolling, but I totally should have brought the white gas Whisperlite. That thing rocks the cold weather. Lesson learned.
The other lesson learned is that cooking, tearing down camp, packing, and any minor tasks take SO much effort when the temps are negative. I think that’s why most folks out here in Colorado hang up their backpacking gear until summer. Despite the frigid weather I still like it. The bears are sleeping so you don’t really have to practice maniacal food safety and there’s nobody else out on the trails so you pretty much have most places to yourself.
