Eccles Pass and the Rest of the Story!

Did you leave off after yesterday wondering what is happening with the boys?  Here is the rest of the story.  When we talk with the Chief Information Officer, he informs us the two boys were not at the car!  Still lost!  I want to throw up, after seeing all of that water and it ripping down the mountain I can only think that 15 year old boys think they are invincible...  

We head toward the car and meet the mom coming up an obsolete trail from the diversion dams,  When we talk with her, she has put her dog into the car and is headed back up the mountain to look for the boys.  She thinks someone went to call 911. She wants us to help.  Here is where I'm caught in what is the best way I can help this mother?  I know the Rangers for this district are trained in search and rescue, they know this mountain better than I.  The Rangers need to be notified and I have the longitude and latitude coordinates in my gps for the last known location of the boys. Kathi and I write down all of her information, name, phone, car and anything else she wants to tell us.  We head for the car to drive out to the nearest cell reception, she heads back up the trail.  

We have to get out of our wet boots before we can leave because Kathi is not able to drive with her boots on.  As she is changing I am digging through my travel folder, because I want to be able to direct dial the ranger station and give them all of the gps locations and information they will need.  We know someone left to go call, but we want to get more information out there.  

As we are climbing into the car Kathi sees the mother coming.... She found them.  She is an emotional wreck.  We listen to her as she talks through what she just needs to put to voice.  She thanks us for helping.  The whole time the boys are still not in the parking lot.  I'm sort of wondering what is up with the boys.  The Mother is shaking and emotionally telling us she just was not going to have the strength to tell the other boys family, that the boys were missing... The mother said the reason the boys were not hiking with her was because she and her son were fighting about his phone. Whatever he had done, she was going to be taking away his phone as a consequence and he did not like that idea so he and his friend distanced themselves from her. So she had a lot of guilt about her last words to her son as they were words of consequence...

There was a lot of deep emotional venting going on with the Mother as the boys come clopping down the trailhead out into parking lot.  The boys are now walking towards the car with one, 20 feet in front of the other.  Ok, I work with kids, lots and lots of kids, I can tell you that the expression on the son's face was rather pompous, while the friends face looked rather sheepish head down eyes looking forward, sort of dragging his feet forward towards the car.  This is not the "look" I'm imagining someone would look like if they were -lost.  I wanted to have a good long talk with that mother's boy about how his actions of today will forever tattoo his life, his mothers life and his friends life.  We gave the Mother a hug and got in the car and drove out onto the really skinny gravel road. I suspect it will take a long time for the truth of the day's events to eventually come out.

We get in our car, take a deep breath and drive away down the skinny gravel road.  We just happened to be in about the only place where two vehicles could possibly pass and a green forest service pick up with four guys in it came flying up the road.  It was the Ranger search and rescue group headed up to go and find the boys.  I'm so wanting to be within ear shot of that ranger interviewing the found boys.  We continue on our way.

Today we headed up to Eccles Pass by way of the Meadow Creek Trail. Or perhaps this trail should be called Runners Alley

On today's trail there are either runners running out and up or down and out.  Perhaps 20 runners might be close to the real count.  Just out for a quick run up a 2,700 foot elevation gain...no problem!  Running up or down seems like a rather dangerous idea!  The Meadow Creek Trail winds through an aspen-pine forest to the Lily Pad Lake Trail split and then bends northeast.  Right around this spot you will see on your left side a mine ruin.  The trail  widens on a variously soft and rocky path through columns of lodgepole to Meadow Creek, resuming a methodical climb once across.

At 2.5 miles the trail narrows in a transitional forest where lodgepole give way to spruce and fir in the high subalpine. The forest briefly opens with a glimpse of the upper valley, and presses steeply to a crest over the first of three large meadows.  Some of these meadows are man made a result of the mining boom in this area.

The trail drops and raises ruggedly up the wooded south edge of the first and smallest meadow, crossing Meadow Creek once on a makeshift bridge. Here we saw three beginner hikers crawl across these logs bear style.  That is hands and feet on the logs walking on hands and feet.  Large side pools in the vicinity are particularly good for fishing as we saw several fish swimming around.

The thinning forest breaks on the edge of a second, much larger meadow with a revealing look at the entire upper valley.  Chief Mountain (11,377') stands prominently to the south, and Eccles Pass can now be seen to the northwest.

The trail levels into the third and largest meadow which leads back over Meadow Creek.  This has a nice creek crossing causing Penny to baptize her boot.

The path is intermittently faint but intuitively followed to the Meadow Creek - Gore Range Trail junction, with Eccles Pass clearly visible in the northwest corner of the vally.  

The trail winds steeply up to Eccles Pass, and for the first time some very nicely ramped switch backs are in place.  A nice change from all of the other altitude! We sat up at the top for about fifteen minutes.  On the way down to the boot baptizing creek we run into a guy who did his PhD at the University of Minnesota.  He recognized right away my Minnesotan accent.  So this conversation begins: He is up hiking around thinking about what he will do when he retires, which is in a short amount of time.  So, I ask what he is retiring from... Wow, what a question, he named off fifteen jobs he has had and only one of them had anything to do with his PhD.  He had quite a story, a fascinating man who was a very good conversationalist.  Ok, one might ask how you have these impromptu conversations 5 miles from any road?  Really it all begin with Kathi and I applauding his dog's creek crossing antics.  That's really all it takes to have a good entertaining chat, right?  

Somewhere along this trail we are suppose to see another mining ruin building on the north side and iron rails from the tracks to haul for the mines on the south side of the trail. We finally found some iron tracks and metal laying on the ground but did not locate anything else.

Today's hike 10.7
Total hiked 99.0

Eccles Pass in the back, a reflection off of a pond

Mine ruin

Gore Mountain range in the back

This is the creek crossing where we watched three adults bear walk across the logs.  Kathi takes them on like a champ!

I think I baptize my foot at this crossing

Making the last push up to the pass

We swap pictures with a foursome hiking from Breckenridge to Vail

We found the rails left over from the mining years.  Miners would load their rail carts and send them down the line for processing of the material they had removed from the mountain.  This is all that remains from the light rail carts in this gulch.