Breckenridge, CO

In the morning I filled up on water and had a conference call with a client to keep things moving on her website. I stopped at McDonald’s to use their Wifi to plan out the alternate route of my trip. McDonald’s WiFi sucks, I always end up using my phone as a hotspot.

My hip still isn’t feeling 100% so I find a place to dispersed camp where I don’t have to hike to far. I find Crystal Lake Trail. I also find the closest REI store in Colorado Springs to restock on propane and dehydrated meals for the Maroon Bells hike.

After I leave Colorado Springs towards Breckenridge I head directly into the mountains, just what I was waiting for. When I pass the Pikes Peak welcome center the scenery opens up into an amazing view. It is an enormous valley surrounded entirely by mountains. I have to stop immediately, take out my good camera and tripod and take a few shots. Hopefully I captured a good one.

The rest of the way there are great views all around. Some of the prettiest driving I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I worry I’m looking away from the road for too long to be safe. But so far so good!

When I turn off the main road I come to a slightly rough gravel road that winds all the way up a mountain. About 2 miles up I come to a trailhead. After the trailhead they only allow 4×4 vehicles for good reason. There are massive rocks and holes in the ground, that a low clearance vehicle would get wrecked on. At a fork in the road after some really rugged stuff I find the closest pull off and park.

There I find a firepit with a bunch of split wood left behind. Score. I start setting up camp, seeing a bunch of hikers coming and going from the top of the mountain. I’d like to go back someday and see it, but I was more concerned about resting up for the big hike ahead of me.

I made a pretty big fire that night and ate a big meal of Pad Thai (delicious) and granola. The stars here were pretty good too. But, there was a lot of pine tree coverage and a bit more light pollution.

It got cold that night. Really cold. I was at 10,000 feet. I was fully clothed and even busted out my heavy duty 0 degree sleeping bag. However, it turns out that the temperature wasn’t the issue. The issue was that my tent was on a bit more of a downhill incline then I expected. So, the whole night I’m sliding down the air mattress. I would wake up curled in a ball only on the bottom half of my tent.

That morning was as expected, very cold. The first thing I did was throw on my winter jacket and gloves. It was hard to sleep so I woke up just as dawn broke. The sky and clouds were beautiful cotton candy blue and pink. Luckily, I parked in a spot where I had a clear shot of a nearby peak so I took out my camera and tripod and took about 20 minutes worth of photos. I think I’ll have at least one keeper out of that round.

Being so cold, it made packing up camp and cooking breakfast very difficult. It seems everything I had to touch was either metal or wet. It was like I was reliving the scene from A Christmas Story where the kid gets his tongue stuck to the flagpole every 5 minutes buy with my fingers sticking to my tent poles.

Overall, it was a good experience. It happens that my slanted spot got me up early to take some good pictures that I probably would have slept through otherwise.