Steps in the Right Direction: Woody Creek Trail, no..................... American Lake, Aspen, CO

Morning balloon ride is floating down the valley as we drive out .

We started out early this morning by driving way back on the Woody Creek road. We drove five miles on a pretty nice two lane tar road and the an additional 4 miles on a gravel road which vacillated between two lanes and one lane. The very windy road around very large rock outcroppings created interesting corners. The reason we are headed this way is because when we were at the ranger station, the ranger said this was his favorite hike. Ok, we'll give it a go. The hike is right next to Woody Creek. The wild flowers and green growing plants were up to our arm pits, but the willows and young aspens were at face level. So you wanted to keep your sun glasses on for eye protection. But we were in such a shaded area you couldn't see with your sun glasses on; therefore, you put your glasses on top of your head. Well that was not a good idea either, as with all of the ducking, diving, and willow whipping going on I thought I would never find my sun glasses if they got whipped off so I stopped to pack them up. At times there would be a small clearing where you could get a good view of the cascading rushing Woody creek. We took a few pictures of the cascading waterfalls when we had the opportunity. We also knew there were suppose to be some miners ruins along the creek, but you could not look for them as you were too busy trying to protect yourself from the whipping greenery. Hiking here today is sort of like reading the first 100 pages of a book that you thought you wanted to read and after the first 100 pages you are not enjoying the book so you just stop reading it. Hoping that it is going to improve is holding onto hope that will fail you. We continued on this trail for two miles before pulling the plug on this hike. It was clear to us that we were not enjoying our last full day of hiking in this area so we decide to go do something else... We hike a total of 4 miles and saw a Pine Martin. Oh and got whipped in the face uncountable times. We head back to the car and set our sights on East Maroon Pass.

Woody Creek with morning sun

Trail

Trail through here too.

Bridge over creek, Last week ranger said these log were right above the water level.

The pass we purchased earlier in the week for the Maroon Lakes Recreation area is good through today, so we start driving up the Maroon Bells road. All traffic into Aspen has to go through a one lane traffic circle. Yep, traffic jam! Where are all of these cars going on a Thursday morning at 9? We finally get through and are on our way up to the Maroon Creek ranger station. At the ranger station we find out that even though we have a 'pass' it is after 9am in the morning so we can not drive through to the lake where the trailheads are. We would have to drive back down and purchase a bus ticket in Aspen. This is not how it was handled two years ago, but the lady was quite sure she was not going to let us pass through. We turned around and while driving down I pulled open the topo map and started looking for something close. We ended up going back to the traffic jam spinner and spun over one road to the right. We drove up Castle Creek road to the American Lake trailhead. The parking lot was pretty full, but we managed to carve out a spot. We grabbed our gear and hit the trail, again. American lake is 3.26 miles from the trailhead and has roughly 2,000 feet elevation gain. The trail was a lot of up. Lucky for us this was the softest trail we have stepped on all week. Our feet and knees appreciated the gentleness of this trail after the pounding our bodies took on Mount Sopris yesterday. It is filled with all sorts of flowers in bloom. Some of the flowers we have seen before, some we knew the names of and some we just gave a name too. We use the method most commonly referred as " I's calls'em as I see em". A couple of our newly named flowers are called "puffy ball daisy" and "flowering Ferny". We enjoy the hike up to the lake as it follows along a gulch and we got really good views of the neighboring mountains. The beauty of aspen trees fluttering away, filling the sides of the gulch with the illusion of movement. There were old growth pine trees standing big and tall and somewhere along the trail there was a mine ruin. We forgot to look for that, but certainly could have as nothing was whipping us in the face! Guess we were too busy looking at everything else. At one point there is a very large open meadow that looks much like a ski hill as it is nicely bowled out and no trees around. The blue chiming bells in bloom have the whole hill a blue tint. Very beautiful. By the time we arrived at the lake both Kathi and I were about an hour past wanting to eat lunch. We pretty much just sat down and started to eat with not a care about the mosquitoes who decided to snack on us. We needed food! That was two big climbs already today. After pounding down a half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich we then think about putting on some bug juice. The fish in the lake are jumping and it is very easy to see the fish swimming in the lake. On one side of us the are three guys fly fishing. Let me be more accurate, two are fishing and one is trying to get his fly line out of the spruce tree behind him. He got a little over exuberant with the whole whipping the fly line back and forth and forgot to check his environment... One of the guy's did land a rainbow trout while we sat and watched and he just as quickly released it back to the lake. Time to head out as the clouds have moved in and the temps are dropping. We make it about a half a mile before it is raining. We put on our rain coats and pack covers and resume hiking. Within 100 yards we are stopping to put on rain pants too, as it is hailing. Since we have all of our gear on we just keep hiking along passing people who did not bring rain gear. They looked pretty wet. It does stop raining while we are heading down. We are enjoying the flowers and coming up with new names for the flowers. We arrive back at the car making our