Mount Ida walking the Continental Divide

July 18, 2011

            Mount Ida from the Alpine visitor Center   Elevation 11780  Hike 8 miles

 Total miles 95.9

Lucky me, I brought my computer along today on our trip.  We swung into the Beaver Meadows Ranger station so we could pop up the internet and see what we could find out as far as weather over at Longs.  We could get internet but not a report that we were looking for.  When at the Longs Ranger Station on Saturday we had looked at some 'special' forecast website specific to Longs Peak.  Of course we feel we are Internet savey enough to be able to search and locate this on the Web...  After fifteen minutes of savey we are still looking and thinking we should just come back later in the day when some one can just give us the web address or a number to call.

We continued our drive up above tree line on our way up to the Alpine Visitor center. This little trip took awhile as we were following some rookie mountain drivers.  Even Penny was thinking they were going slow and certainly could pull over on one of the pull outs to let the back up of cars pass. They must have been scared of doing that also.

We finally made it to the top where the Alpine Visitor station is located.  Here we found a Ranger who went in and looked up the phone number to the Longs Peak Ranger station so we should call for the weather forecast in that part of the park.  (Of course there is no cell phone service up by the Alpine Ranger station so we write the number down for later.)  Believe it or not, when you are in the mountains, the weather forecasts vary from one part of the park to another.  We had this secret Longs Ranger Station phone number  last year, but did not bring it along this year, nor did we write it down when we were at the Longs station two days ago.  These are things that Penny usually has written down in her little hiking traveling notebook.  Well, we could not find it, but once we had the number we wrote it in a couple of places in the book.

This is actually a small pond not very deep, but still has some ice on the left side.  Mt. Ida in the back.

At 11,800 feet we can see down through the valley.

Alpine Phacelia

On our drive up we saw three big herds of elk.  Looked like lots of doe and juniors.  We were thinking that we might see some elk today while out hiking on the trail, but no such luck.  We hiked down about 2.8 miles down towards Meeker trail. We meet three people coming up the trail all out of breath.  They had started from the bottom of Meeker Trail.  They were from Georgia and were looking for the Mt Ida trail.  Sorry to tell you but you missed the trail junction by about 1.5 miles.  They said they had come up through some pretty nasty snowy trails and were lucky not to be lost.  Well, you are not really lost, but you still missed the trail junction...  They still wanted to go to Mt Ida, so we set off blazing a trail up and then started wrapping around the mountain to the right side.  The three from Georgia had no sense of what to do when trying to find your way back.

Even through Kathi and I had two GPS, we still were a bit shaky on using the GOTO function.  So we used the old fashion way to find our way back, we built cairns.  As Kathi and I hiked up and out over to the right shoulder of the mountain we laid the return trail, the Georgia three some just kept hiking away.  I hope they know how to get back.  I guess they had a destination in mind and did not concern themselves with the return details…  The older guy just said we will just hike back towards “that” mountain…  Well you lose sight of “that” mountain as soon as you go around the bend…  And when faced with many mountains in a row, finding “that” mountain is sort of difficult!  Good luck with that!  Kathi and I went up until we had hiked about four miles.  We could see Mt Ida in the distance and we could see the trail that was not in the snow.  There just was no reason to tromp out the rest of the way.  We are up on the Continental Divide and from where we are you can see a long way!  Spending most of the day above 11,000 feet was helping thin out our blood.

Building a cairn

Just follow the cairns back.

On the return trip we just followed the little cairn guys we had built.  I also did some action research with the gps and learned on the fly so to speak how these little babies can show you how to get back...  Now I understand the goto waypoint and the screen with the map view.  Very nice.  I will be able to use that with more confidence now.  But there still is no substitute for common sense and old practice of cairns. 

We made it back to the Alpine station and went in a talked with the ranger up there.  We wanted to know if the Ranger Station could call Longs for us.  No, he was not able to do that. 

Elk herd right along along the road.

Ok, we have the number and can call when we have phone service on our cell phones.  After that we went over and looked through the gift shop.  As always, there are always crying kids in there do to the altitude which is 11,800.  It just makes them cranky.  On the way to the car we saw two guys with mongo lenses on camera and telescope.  They had their sights set on a small group of big bull Elk just up over the rise.  Talk about some nice racks!!!  They let us look through the telescope and get several ganders at the bulls, nice.  I believe they were of the 7x 7 size.

On the drive down we were stopped on the road by a stop/go flagman.  We sat for about 15 minutes before a lead truck brought a group of 70 cars past us.  A road crew was putting down fresh oil and then a cover of crushed tiny rock.  I bet all of the bike riders who went up to the top are REALLY going to be surprised and very sad when their trip down will now take on a whole new meaning of challenging.  I would not like to ride down that steep grade and then add to it loose tiny gravel.  I have a personal memory about falling on the downhill portion of a gravel road when racing my sister home.  Let’s just say loosing a front wheel while going downhill on a gravel road is a very lasting memory. Since my downhill in no way measures up to this downhill I am only guessing the best way down is to hitch hike…

We drive down to the Beaver Pond ranger station and Kathi goes into the ranger station while I sit in the car and look on the computer.  We are trying to get find that weather report for tomorrow, along with the next two days.  Trying to decide when we should take a crack at Longs…