Past the airport we go into the round about and just like that we are on the Castle Creek road. We have to drive up Castle Creek road past million dollar homes along a nicely paved road, up to a very skinny unimproved road for the last mile. We arrive at a very full parking lot at the trailhead. We manage to squeeze into the last parking spot. What is with parking around here? We were thinking we should have gotten to the trail head a bit earlier, but were very happy to have managed to find the last spot, or so we thought.
For those of you who have been reading these blogs for years, you are probably thinking hey, I think we have virtually hiked this trail before. Yes, two times before, one time we hiked it up to the Silver Dollar ponds and the next time we hiked it all the way up to the nudest pot smoking colony... I mean the hot springs. This second time was when the woods were teaming with bear, cougar, wolverines, coyotes all looking to eat the remains of the beef cattle which had wandered over the pass and had to winter in the area. The trailhead sign this year was pretty boring after such an exciting bit of information that was posted on the board two years ago.
I will briefly remind some of you about the history of Conundrum Creek. Conundrum Creek is named for the fact that many a miner came back into the area in hopes of striking it rich. The surrounding mountains and creek carried signs of gold, but no one ever found any. Thus the name Conundrum. Part of the trail still shows signs of the wagon wheels the miners used in getting to and from their stake. I am sure they must have used two wheeled wagons as the trail is so rough that keeping four wheels intact and still on the wagon would have been very hard. The trail at times is soft on your feet as the pine needles have fallen through the years and left this nice loamy soil. If this loamy soil was placed all in a row it might measure one mile, perhaps less. The rest of the 8.5 miles of this hike seems to have rocks the sizes of kitchen sinks, basketballs, and softballs. The kitchen sink rocks you step on or over, the softball size you try to avoid because they roll, the basketball size ones seem to cause the most trouble. All basketball rocks seem to jump up and try to trip you. I swear they are alive!
Today the flowers were beautiful. I can identify forget me nots, bluebells, columbine, chiming bells, wild geraniums, wild roses, delphinium, and 27 more I don't know the names of but really appreciate their beauty. We choose this hike today with the intention of just going up to Sliver Dollar ponds to work on acclimating our bodies to elevation. The weather was so beautiful bright blue sky, perfect temps, I ask Kathi if she wouldn't like to hike up further to the ranger cabin and take a gander, I guess for no other purpose than to see if it is still knee deep in cow poo. Her answer was something like I'm going to have to get my mind worked around that. When your legs are fresh and the hike is just starting these ideas seem like great ideas. As we are getting closer to Silver Dollar ponds, clouds start gathering and rain looks likely. Ok, let's not go look in the cabin... Who would have shoveled it out anyway? Not a ranger, so let's just assume it is still full. I have seen plenty of barns filled with manure. I'm sure it would look just like those in my distant memory.
We do hike a bit past the ponds and continue up to the next water crossing just to see how high the water is running. It looks like people can get through without too much trouble. Hmmm, ok, this seems far enough, so we turn back and have lunch at the ponds. We sit here until which point we think the clouds are getting serious enough that we need to head back so as not to be hiking in the rain.
We run into a family on what they are calling their post card summer tour. They left Maine on June 18 and had been to Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, the Badlands, Yellowstone, Tetons, Arches, Zion, Grand Canyon. They had not spent more than a couple of days at any one spot. They certainly knew where they wanted to come back and spend more time and where they did not need to go back too. They were headed up to the springs to spend the night and do some hiking around.
On our hike out it was amazing how many groups we past who where hiking in. And of all of those groups how many of those groups had teenagers in the group. I just wanted to know if they or their group leaders knew that the hot springs was just like a nudest pot smoking colony? Well those kids were in for a real show! Enough said about that.
The hike out was a real steamy end to a beautiful day. We managed to hike 13.4 miles in 6 hours and 44 mins. We returned to a parking zoo. I thought the lot was full when we took the last spot. People were hanging their cars off of all sorts of angles, parking up against trees, rocks, tucked up into what I thought was considered the woods. They were even parked in the middle of the lot. Some brave soles parked on both sides of the road into the parking lot. In my mind the road was already too skinny. Now we had to tuck in our mirrors just to get out. I should have taken a picture of our truck passing through this little space we were suppose to use as an exit. Ha, and I thought we took the last spot.
We return to Snowmass and begin to look for parking amongst the Wunderlust mat carrying parking lots. Again we stalk a few walkers and come up with a nice spot.
Hiked 13.4 miles
Total 18.13
A good acclimation day.
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| Old miners cabin which is slowly going back into the earth |
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| Who ever lived here was short, the door top is at Kathi's shoulder. |
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| Largest of the Silver Ponds, Mountains in the distance |
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| Beaver dams have flowers along the top edge. |
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| Looking up through the valley towards the hot springs |
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| Time for a quick picture taken by the post card family |
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| Full parking lot, car on top of cars with more cars parked in the middle just to make things interesting. |
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| First we have to back out and then we have to tuck in our mirrors to squeeze down through the end. To the right of the suv and left of the car. |
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