Steps in the Right Direction: Buckskin Pass & Willow Pass

Started off today on the right foot. Everything seemed to come together just right. Started our hike up to the two passes at 7:30 a very sunny morning. Maroon Lake was calm and a real beauty to look at. So beautiful, we had to stop and shoot a few more pictures. We snapped a couple of shots next to a lady who was standing at a tripod painting the view of the lake.

On our way this morning we were sharing the trail with a doe and her two fawns. The momma would jog along keeping ahead of us, but the two fawns would stop and look and then bound up the trail to get caught up with Mom. They were really cute as they tried to take sneak peaks and then pogo stick back up to mom.

On our way we met a Ranger who we had chatted with yesterday. He was on his way down after spending the night at Crater Lake. We asked him if he had been up to Buckskin and Willow Pass. He said both passes were easy to access even with the snow cornice at Buckskin and the flowers were in full bloom. This was music to our ears.

We have to hike out towards Crater lake to get to the trail that will lead up to the Minnehaha gulch. Once we make this trail junction the trail essentially goes up, up, and up. The trail is also quite rocky. The rocks are talus, which according to my definition are basketball size or bigger, scree anything bigger than a ping pong ball, and gravel which is anything the size of a ping pong ball down to sand. All of these rocks come together to create a very dynamic trail. Some rocks slide when you step on them, some rocks roll and some skitter. This all makes for some real good core body fitness needed to stay on your feet. Luckily neither of us take a fall today. Falling on rocks hurts more than falling in mud and snow.

The views going up the gulch open up at around 10,000 feet. At that point you find yourself taking breaks to catch your breath based on where you think you might get a great view. This is not always the best way to get to the top. There was a lot of picture taking along the way.

We make the junction split to Buckskin and Willow Pass in good time, 2 and half hours where we stop and have some snacks as the climb to the top of Buckskin is pretty steep. Slow and steady we make our way closer to the top of Buckskin pass. As you can see from the pictures there is a pretty good snow cornice over the top. We had just past these pyramid type snow castles along the switchbacks and were half way through a snowfield which was lying over the trail when I heard something above me. I looked up and saw missiles of snow and ice flying towards us. I yelled to Kathi "heads up" and then spent the next moments trying to dodge these missiles that were rocketing at us. The sound of these flying baseball, basketball and golf ball sized ice balls was something that I will remember for a long time. Sort of a zzshhhhhwoosh. While I was doing my dodge game, Kathi was in a very unstable footing position and had to scurry up to the trail while at the same time dodging the missiles. Finally the ice stopped coming at us, looking up I want to let out a celebratory whoop and fist pump, but I was afraid my voice might make more ice break loose. With all of the miles we have hiked this is a first for us. It also goes a long way to explaining the pyramid looking snow blobs just off of the trail we had passed just before. There was a really large ice snow block that fell off of the cornice above us.

We have to pass under this cornice two more times on the switch back. Hmmm we did some fast hiking through there. My heart rate reached an all time high as I was moving fast up hill and were at 12,000 feet, and underneath the cornice. Boom boom!

From the top we had excellent views of Snowmass Mountain and Mount Snowmass. We were able to see several groups hiking up the pass from the back side. We sat up at the pass for about fifteen minutes before heading down and around a mountain to get to the top of Willow Pass. We have to go all the way down to the junction and then head back up from there. It takes us 45 minutes to get from the top of Buckskin to the top of Willow. We shoot a couple of pics and chat with a person who followed us up to Willow Pass. She was headed over the pass to spend 48 hours at Willow lake and she was hoping to have the lake to herself. She had a fishing rod with her and was going to teach herself how to fish. She didn't know how she was going to catch and release or how she might cook one up... Well she had 48 hours to work on it right? The clouds started getting a bit heavy so we packed up and headed down. On the way down I see something white moving over on a slope in the distance. We stopped and watched the mountain goats run across the slope and shot a few pics. We had heard they are trying to reestablish the mountain goats to this part of the Rockies. This is our first look at this project.

We head down to the water crossing and need to filter some water. It only takes us about ten minutes to filter some water, but during this time the weather went downhill in my hurry! We had to rush to get into rain coats and cover our packs as it was suddenly raining. There were a few rumbles of thunder which was rather unsettling as we were pretty far above tree line. We did some super fast downhill hiking to get down to tree line. From tree line we were able to hike the rest of the way at a more reasonable pace.

Made it back to the car 8 hours and 8 minutes.
11.7 miles today.
Total hiked 44.03 miles