Write up on 11 days on the trail in the Weminuche Wilderness Area SW Colorado

Preparation
This took place in the following ways
Gear All my gear had been stolen out of my truck on my previous backpacking trip. Over the last 2 years I had accumulated a new tent, sleeping bag, and a few other odds and ends, but went ahead and pulled the trigger on a new pack, sleeping pad, stove, cook set, and other misc items. I may try to give a brief review of what I bought. I had a goal of keeping my all in weight including water at around 30 lbs.
Physical Training I didn't do as much as planned, but it was enough to get me through the trip. A few squats, a few lunges, and a 4-7 mile walk with the pack every other week was about all I got in.
Food Besides bars and trail mix, I generally dehydrated all my own meals. My culinerry exploits have generally gotten better each trip, but this one was a little bit of a let down.
Route I've been pondering the best way to spend roughly 2 weeks on the trail for about a year. After consideration of doing a decent chunk of the CT, the collegiate loop, and other options, I finally settled on a looped out and back from Williams Creek to Silverton.

Day 1
Left Central Texas around 5:00 AM heading to Pagosa Springs. Stopped in Muleshoe for lunch and an oil change. Arrived in Pagosa Springs around 6:30 or so. Enjoyed a burger at Riff Raff Brewing Company on the main drag in town. Went to bed excited about the trip to come.
Day 2
Poison Park TH (9,100')to Beaver Pond on Weminuche Trail (9,800) 1,720 Gain and 1,020 Loss
After getting our fishing license from Walmart (which didn't make it into my pack), we headed to the Poison Park Trailhead.


The trailhead was busy due to elk season kicking off. We saw lots of sad and tired hunters on the trail the first couple miles along with 2 other backpackers. After around 1:00 PM, we didn't see anyone else for the next 2 days and 21 hours of our trek.
There is so much excitement getting on the trail views you take for granted later on in the trip our new and picture worthy on day one.



I couldn't resist chunking my lure in the East for of the Weminuche as we passed by and was rewarded with this nice cutthroat.


We made camp at a very established site late afternoon that was near a very large beaver pond. After setting up camp, we both caught a few trout in the beaver pond. We ate dinner, hung bear bags in the tree down the trail, sat around a camp fire, and then I settled down for a restless night in the tent.



Side beef on first day on the trail. The destruction to the trail, quick sand like mud pits, fallen log switchbacks, and horse flies caused by the horse traffic on the trail was extremely unpleasant. I get it you need horses for hunting, but it really ruined the trail experience.

Day 3
Beaver Pond (9,800) down Divide Lake Trail, south on Pine River Trail, and NW on Flint Creek Trail (9,500) 1,080 Gain and 1,360 Loss
Day 3 was generally an easier day. We weren't able to break camp till around 9:15 and passed Divide Lake a mile or two down the trail.



We arrived at the Pine River and headed south on the Pine River Trail. The river is meandering through spectacular meadows in this area. I realized that I had left my dehydrated chili back in Texas so we planned on doing a little fishing and having some trout for lunch. We gave ourselves 40 minutes to fish a stretch of river down below the trail. In that time, I caught and cleaned 2 cutthroat trout and landed another 15-20. It was just incredible fishing with large cutthroat stacked up and hitting aggressively.





After cooking the trout, we headed down the trail. The character of the river changed near flint creek with more drop in the river and large rocks throughout. I spent a few minutes rock hopping down the Pine pulling trout out of each pool, but the trout were generally 8-12 inches in this area.

We waded across Flint Creek and started the climb up. After a few miles (and then some backtracking), we made camp in a meadow near the creek and settled down for the night.


More to come...

Awesome photos

Day 4
Flint Trail (9,500) to Flint Lake (11,680) 2,380'Gain and 200' Loss

I had done this stretch of trail back in 2005 when I was at A&M, but the trail didn't bring back the memories I expected. It's amazing and isolated, but the pine beetle has wrecked havac on the area. A coyote stared us down shorty after starting down the trail, we saw some bear looking tracks, and found a strange critter in the trail.




We kept a steady pace throughout the day and found ourselves at a small waterfall and pool early afternoon with one last steep uphill climb to get to Flint Lake. Of course we took the time to catch a few fish.

As we started to climb to where the trees were thinning out the views back down the valley were amazing.

We were able to set camp in the vicinity of Flint Lake mid afternoon. This left plenty of time to fish (my hiking buddy) and rest (me). I stumbled upon a moose near the lake, but as I was raising my phone for a picture my friend rounded the corner lower down and along the lake line and yelled that there was a moose. This is all the picture I got.


We didn't have a fire that evening and just enjoyed the moon, stars, and view of the lake.
Day 5
Flint Lake (11,680) to ridge between Flint Lake and Rock Lake, north on trail to CDT, follow the new CDT route to Ute Lake, up and over a saddle down to Valecito Trail, down Valecito Creek Trial to just past confluence with Trinity Creek (10,680) 2,220 Gain and 3,220 Loss

The morning was spectacular as we continued our climb to above tree line. We took a break to soak up some views at the junction of Flint Creek and Rock Creek Trail causing us to run into our first people in 3 days. We asked for news of the hurricane and the McGreggor Mayweather fight, but they had been on the trail since Saturday as well.

As we crossed the Continental Divide, the views back to Rock Lake (Pacific) and down the Ute Creek drainage (Rio Grande/Atlantic) can't be captured in pictures but we tried.



The newly routed CDT was hard to follow. We lost the trail for good about half way to West Ute Lake and bushwacked the rest of the way there. We ran into our second group of hikers near the decent to West Ute Lake and got news on the fight and hurricane.

We took a brief break at West Ute Lake and then climbed to a saddle along the CDT before dropping down to the Valecity Drainage. I was able to place a call home to the family from the ridge line before starting the decent below tree line to avoid the storm blowing in.

My knee started to hurt badly on the decent and proved to be a problem the rest of the trip.
We were starting up Trinity Creek/Starvation Gulch the next day and I had some loose instruction I found on the internet that said to set up camp just below the confluence of Trinity Creek and the Valecito.
It was a long day. A porcupine followed us around camp everywhere we went.

We ate and hung our bags in the dark (which I hate since I'm scared of bears), talked around the fire, and then I settled down for another restless night.



More to come...

Day 6
(10,680) Up Stormy Gulch, side trip to Lake Silex, past Trinity Lake to ridge between Peak 1 and 3 (12,720), down drainage to Elk Creek (10,400) 2,800 Gain and 3,080 Loss

This was probably my favorite day full of epic views, hard work, and emotional roller coasters. It started with a nice trout in the Vallecito and a log crossing of the creek.



My instructions were to:
1. Cross the creek and contour back to Trinity Creek
2. Find a game/hiking trail and work your way up Trinity Creek always keeping the creek to your right
3. Whatever you do, don't get on the other side of the Creek
We did step one easily. Then we did find a game trail where 2 deer had once walkedthen in split into two 1 deer paths. Then we found where the deer had slept and backtraced their steps. So, we started bushwacking our way upgradient keeping the creek somewhere on our right. It was rough going. I of course figured we were pushing a flock of bears out in front of us and then I found this track which, in my mind, just confirmed my assumption.

All of a sudden we made it out of the brush and onto a very high quality hiking trail. We followed it for about 200 yards before it headed to the creek and went across. Well, I wasn't about to break 2 of the 3 rules for hiking up Stormy Gulch so we pushed on through the brush. It wasn't till about an hour and half a mile later that it dawned on me that the creek the trail had crossed had been the drainage from Lake Silex and not Trinity Creek. We crossed over Silex creek, joined what was the most pleasant and remote trail of our trip, and started making great time on our climb.

I was feeling great as we neared what I knew was an approach to Lake Silex. I'm usually the Debbie downer and am not really big into any type of climbing, so I think my buddy was surprised at my insistence to take a stab at it. Due to the bushwacking, we had made slow time for the day so we gave ourselves 30 minutes to make it there and then we would turn around.
The approach involved scrabling along ridges at the base of Storm King Peak, climbing a faint trail along a scree field, one more steep climb, and then a decent to bring the Lake into view.


We hit 30 minutes on the scree field. I begged for 10 more minutes and took off on a near run up the slope. I had planned 2 previous trips backpacking trips (2 years and 4 years ago) that involved a trip to this lake but had failed due to me being to weak/tired/unprepared to complete. I had seen pictures of the lake but had to see it in person and I wasn't going to fail just a couple hundred yards short. After 12 minutes, I arrived at the lake. We took in the view for 5 minutes and turned around and headed back down.

We followed the cairns we had put along the ridge of Storm King Peak (or we would have been in a tight spot). We then picked up our packs and treated making distance as serious as Doss Texas. We climbed steadily to Trinity Lake.

The trail disappeared here and we worked our way through the rock covered tundra to the saddle between Peak 1 and 3.

The view we took in is hard to describe. The ground disappeared in front of us, leveled off in a meadow area with a lake, and then fell off the edge of the world. The Elk Creek Drainage was off in the distance nearly 2,500 feet below.

We struggled to find a trail so used a combination of game trails to make our way to the lake and then on to the drop off. It is impossible to put the sights and sounds into words, especially with a limited vocabulary, so I won't try.





We found ourselves with about a half mile of boulder hopping left to make it to tree line. I had found no information on this route and didn't know if it was best to stay to the left or right of the drainage we were following. About 100-yards from tree line, the lighting started and we made as fast as time as we could out of the boulder field. Complete exhaustion was starting to set in for me and we had some difficult route finding to go. After what seamed like hundreds of downed trees, several cliff outs, and lots of backtracking later, we finally made it to Elk Creek. My memory told me that the trail was a couple hundred feet above the creek in this location, but just a few minutes later the trail appeared a couple yards in front of us and I fell to the trail with joy since I had started to think we were going to be wandering around all night in the woods.

It was a shock being on such a well travelled trail like Elk Creek. It is part of the CT and is also a popular destination for train folks. We found a great camp spot and settled down for the evening dreaming of what food awaited us in Silverton the next day.


Day 7
Elk Creek (10,400) to Molas Pass (10,580) 2,000 Gain and 1,820 Loss


If you've done this before, the climb out of the Animus River Valley up to Molas Pass is never easy. It felt great the first 80% but the last 20% seemed like forever. By the time we made it to the Molas Store to pick up our resupply bags, I was dragging my leg behind me pretty badly due to the before mentioned knee pain.
We grabbed our resupply boxes and picked up a hitch to Silerton. After finding one of the last rooms left in town, we headed to the Avalanche Brewing Company for some pizza and brews.

I could only throw down half a pizza before I got stuffedmy stomach was beginning to shrink. A shower and a bed felt like a million bucks even though it was just 2 dudes sharing a queen bed in a cheap hotel.
To be continued

That's probably all I have this evening. I'll do the return trip later this week. Spoiler alert...I had a run in with my greatest backpacking fear.

1) This is very cool
2) I am very jealous


Thanks for sharing!

Great post. Sadly posts like this one seem to be a thing of the past on the Outdoor Board.