8/5 Pirika Peak, Pack up, drop down to a new camp and then hike out

We awake with the reward of a beautiful sun rise out one of our vestibule doors and an elk up on the ridge out the other door.  Just below us, there are two bull moose grazing their way down to the lake.  Ok, even if it is monsoon season and we get rained on every day, this is pretty incredible.

After breakfast and before packing up our camp, Claudia, Bec, Marybeth, Kathi and I hike up to the top of Parika Peak.  We want to hike up and see what views we missed the other day when the weather was so stormy.  It takes us about 35 minutes to hike to the top of the saddle and another 20 minutes to scramble up to the top of the peak.

From the saddle, Marybeth had cell reception and used it to call Wendy to report that we were all doing well and on schedule to meet at the Bowen trailhead at our pre-arranged time.  Pat took a few pictures of us from the campsite.  We look like little dots on the peak.

We hiked back down to camp, tore it down, packed up, and put Marybeth in the front to lead us down to our next camp site.  We wanted to be a little closer to the trailhead for tomorrow's hike out.  Marybeth usually likes to hike towards the end of the line.  She has said repeatedly during our trip that she is slow and does not want to hold anyone up.  But put her in the lead, and she is full speed ahead.  We teased her that she has been holding back all week.

We found a great little spot up and off the trail to set up camp.  Once we have camp set up, we go off to do some exploring of a water fall we had close to us.  We came back to camp to climb into the tents for a brief shower and then were able to sit around most of the afternoon sharing stories.

First jobs are always a good subject.  We found special moments as people shared assembly line work, camp counselors, pizza packaging, pickle factory, glove inspector, ice cream truck driver, candy counter at the Ben Franklin store, county lawn mower, cow milker...All good stories.  We start to make dinner and just as Marybeth was going to tell her "tractor in the pond" story the weather turned.  We all spend a bit more tent time.  During this storm the lightning was close, and our conversation from tent to tent was more in line with "I counted to one on that flash-boom..."  We are thankful that we are now down below tree line.

After dinner, we chat some more.   Marybeth shares one of her Easter Seals camp counselor stories of taking her campers to the Worlds Fair in NY.  She told of her memories of walking through the modern kitchen showcase.  Imagine when the microwave oven was just a visionary dream awaiting the final research needed for safety.  She also had memories of seeing the space industry and meeting astronauts with her Easter Seal kids.  This was the race to the moon time!

The next morning, we woke up at 6 and packed up camp.  We had to put our rain flys out into the sun to try and dry them off.  We set off for the trailhead by 8:30.  We had what we thought was a 4.5 mile hike downhill to the trailhead.  We had good views of Longs Peak along the way.  We arrived at the trailhead at 11:50 with Wendy and Barb waiting for us. They had driven over from Tabernash.  Wendy and Barb had hiked a bit into the woods to meet us.  They had placed their bets on when we would appear.  As we walked the final half mile to the cars we gave them a brief overview of the highlights from the past six days.  Arriving at the cars we discover Wendy and Barb had a cooler filled with M&M'ss, KitKat bars, beverages, and potato chips.  After spending the last 6 day's eating dehydrated food...this was a perfect gift!

We drove back to the house in the rain and hail telling stories of our adventure.

Back at the house we laid everything out to dry on the driveway.

For dinner, we had hamburgers, brats, fruit, salad, chocolate chip cookies and ice cream  Yum yum yum!

After dinner, we plug my camera into the TV and watch the slideshow of memories from the week.
Great views, great conversations, great hiking, and time learning about the secrets of backpacking.  What an honor to have spent the past five days with these amazing women.

Our Kitchen Big Rock area

Phone service is very iffy, Marybeth had cell service and called in our information.

Marybeth and Bec win the bad hair doo of the day.

Leaving our high elevation campsite

Last night camp site at lower elevation

Full Moon 

Bridge over the Grand Ditch

Sign in box if you are entering through the Bowen trailhead.  Almost done.

Claudia and Marybeth tie on the last bedhead photo

Wendy and Barb are our Sag Wagon pick up team  

Trying to get gear dried out before the next rain storm moves in.

8/4 Pirika Lake to Baker's Pass

Kathi and I have considered hiking to Baker's Pass a few other times on our trips to Rocky Mountain National Park.  We have usually stayed on the Estes Park side of RMNP, which makes the drive to the trailhead really long on Trail Ridee Road which makes this a major stopper for hiking this pass.  Since we are up at Parika Lake, Baker's Pass is just a short day hike away.

We sleep in a bit as we know the hike is not very far.  We have a nice warm cup of coffee and warm breakfast before heading off.  As we are getting our breakfast ready, Pat has already scanned the area and found three bull moose up over the knoll we are camped below.  We walk up and watch them graze the meadow grasses for a while before returning to our breakfast.

Everyone else is going to hang around camp and rest up after yesterdays' hike.  Kathi and I review the maps with Pat and set off.  Pat's parting words were if we are not back by 10 pm, she would know something happened.  We laughed, knowing if we are not back by 2 pm, they would know something had happened.  From Parika Lake to Bakers Pass it is a short hike on a pretty level shelf.  A round trip of just under five miles.

Our biggest challenge was to find the trail.  Although clearly marked on the topo map and trail book, the trail is not maintained and relies on the tromping of hiking boots to etch it into the ground.  Several cairns mark the path, but some of the carins have grown into the hillside landscape over the years.  A hiker with a decerning eye can find the markers, however, it is a good idea to carry a topo map, compass, and altimeter just to be safe.  I did read somewhere that the trail is scheduled for "maintenance" during the summer of 2017.  I did not see anyone working yet.

On the way to Baker's Pass, we found several patches of wild flowers, remnants of old mica and quartz mines.  We also schlepped around an old corral that had become wet and boggy with all of the rain.  The old timbers lay in a decaying pile, and one corner of the corral is slowing aging with time creating a great photo op.

The Pass was not much farther down from the mines.  Here we sat and looked at the map and identified all of the mountains of the Never Summer Mountain range.  (FYI:  Asics running shoes have several shoes with names of the Never summer mountains - Stratus, Cumulus, Nimbus.)  Soon the clouds started changing as the temps were dropping.  We needed to head back to camp.

We arrived back a Parika Lake by noon.  We tried to eat lunch by the lake but could not find a place out of the wind.  We walked back up to the flat where were we were camped and found the others had been watching "Moose TV".  They spent their day around camp and watching the moose graze.  They also had found that a stand of krummholz trees just up the way offered a pretty good place to set up a shower.  Kathi and I gathered our clean clothes, the sun warmed water bag, and headed to "natural krummholz" shower.

I did learn a thing or two about taking an "o'de'natural" shower in the great outdoors during a windy day.  Wash your hair last.  Once your head is wet, your body gets too cold to even think about wanting to wash any other part.

After showers, we all sat as low to the ground as we could behind a big rock by our kitchen to sit out of the wind and chat.  Claudia brought over one of her brain puzzles and we all worked on thinking how many words we could make up from the provided letters.  Average was 15 words.  Together we could only think of 13.  We tried very hard to dream up two more words...

We played a few group games until the weather finally chased us into our tents for another rain event.

Taken from inside of the mining location.  

August 3 Parika Lake

Have I left you wondering about the leaky air mattress?  Kathi slept perfectly on it one night.  I slept perfectly on it one night.  I think the leak is at the nozzle.  I hate to deflate it as we get ready to move to our next base camp because we have found the sweet spot, or maybe I should say the just right closure... Messing with it will only lead to leakiness!  I'm pretty sure that backpack hiking with a fully pumped up mattress under my arm is not common practice.

8/3 Parika Lake

Up this morning at 6 am.  We packed up camp and were on the trail by 8.  We made good time getting up to Bowen Pass.  We drop down into a beautiful meadow filled with flowers.  Somewhere up here is Ruby Lake.  We do not even see a glimpse of it, but have a pretty good guess where it might be located.  We also were able to see the ridge we were hiking on yesterday. 

Hiking through the meadow from Bowen Pass to the Continental Divide pass we stop to filter some water.  While we are filtering a gentleman about our age is hiking down from the way we are headed.  We bid him a good day.  He bids us “good luck”....  The six of us just give him the “What did you say look…”  Did he mean, “I don’t think you can make it?”  Did he mean he felt that the six of us “are not capable“ to hike that?  Or did he know something that we did not know about the trail?  Whatever he meant, the tone of his comment only lit the fire under our hearts, and perhaps made our 40 plus pound packs feel more like 30-pound packs.  

We continued on up to the Continental Divide.  The divide was rather windy at the top so we decided to drop down over the pass so we could get out of the wind for a snack.  But we were not too far down the other side as it became clear the skies were no longer blue.  They were filling in with clouds.  We hiked to the bottom of the other side of the pass.  We stopped at a small little stream where Bec could soak her foot.  It was around eleven in the morning, big puffy clouds were starting to gather.  Consulting the maps we talked about our options of continuing or pitching tents at our present location. We could see up the side of the next pass.  A winding pencil line of a hiking trail flowed up and over what we knew was not the top of the next pass, but certainly, it could not be that much farther.  Perhaps another 200 feet of elevation that we could not see.  Being that it was still so early, we decided to hike on.

As we neared the last 200 feet of elevation before reaching the top of Mt. Fairview our luck ran out.  The wind had picked up, the temps had dropped, and the skies started throwing bursts of hail and large rain on us.  We dropped our packs and grabbed our rain gear, wiggling and wrangling to get our gear on without losing it to the strong winds.  Geared up we pressed on to hike up and over the pass and descend from the high ridge before the lightning started.  Sadly, we are at the best part of the hike with views, but with our heads down, we press forward across the ridge walk knowing that we need to get to a safer elevation.  At this point, you might be remembering the rules of lightning:  tallest, largest, pointiest...You want to be none of these.  

Finishing the last part of the ridge walk we meet a group of exuberant youth hiking up the trail from Parika Lake.  They were wearing shorts and t-shirts. The leader of the group had a wildly flapping yellow poncho.  The poncho whipping so violently that it offered no rain protection and more of personal slapping assault weapon.  These youth apparently saw no weather related reason to be headed down, heck, they had just spent 2 hours hiking up… One thing about hiking is you are free to make your own choices.  Older and perhaps wiser, our group of women chose to get the heck off of the ridge and leave the youthful group as the tallest, largest, pointiest.

From the saddle of the pass, our group headed down towards the grassy area above the alpine lake of Parika and the younger underdressed group headed even higher up towards Parika Peak.  On our walk down towards the lake, lightning struck in the valley we were hiking.  Thinking that she was the tallest, largest, pointiest, Bec dropped down to all fours.  At first, I thought she was struck by lightning, but I had felt none of the electricity in the air, quickly realizing she was ok and in greater need of getting further down the trail, Bec got back on her feet and continued with us to hike down the switchbacks to the rise above the lake.  

At the rise above the lake we took a quick survey of camp location, looking for three tent areas that were “flat” along with a good “kitchen”.  Seizing the break in the rain, we got busy pitching tents before the racing black clouds burst with their next load of hail, strong winds, and hard rain drops.  Just as we were almost finished pitching the tent, the youth group were frolicking on top of Mt. Parika.  The clouds burst open,  Kathi and I tossed our packs in the tent doors and crawled in.  For the next two hours, we sat in our tent safe from the pelting rain and hail.  I did not see the youth group hike down past us.  

With all of the tent time that we had, each of us had brought along something to engage our down time. I was sitting in the tent organizing my gear and writing my story of the day.  Kathi was doing her brain puzzle book which contained several different brain puzzles including crossword puzzles.With our three tents within voice distance, occasionally Kathi would have to send a question along the tent telephone voice line and inquire if anyone knew who was the author of the Nancy Drew series, or what the word for Father was in French.  Claudia brought along several saved up crossword puzzles from the Milwaukee Journal, Bec brought along her iPhone with downloaded books, Marybeth had picked up a book at the grocery store the night before we left, and I wish I could remember what Pat had.  Bad me.  

Today’s hike was just under five miles and we peaked at 12,149 feet.  We gained an elevation of 2,493 feet and lost 1,237 feet.  We had along the way great views, sun shine, flowers, clouds, wind, hail, rain and hard earned satisfaction.  

After two hours of rain and hail, the skies cleared and we exited our tents long enough to know it was just a small break in the weather.  We picked up what we were going to need for supper, hit the bushes to take care of business, and talked about safe cooking in the vestibules of our tents.  We each headed back to our tents as the next storm blew in.  And blew it did!  I was trying to light the stove in the tent vestibule area.  The wind gusted so hard the tent bent to one side releasing the tent from the stakes.  The vestibule started flapping in the wind.  I had no intention of lighting the tent on fire, so I doused the fire, rehooked the tent to the stakes and worked on keeping the tent up.  At times, I had to lay on my back with my foot up in the air supporting the top cross bar of our tent.  The wind was so strong, that I was sure it was going to kink the tent pole.  While lying there, with my foot up in the air holding the tent up, my mind narrowed in on an idea of how to engineer a stronger system.  I came up with the idea of bolstering the crossbar with my hiking pole and tethering the hiking pole handle to the tent crossbar with the extra string I had squirreled away in my ditty bag.  After putting this idea into action, I had a perfect solution to the wind/tent problem.  I could now sit back up and relax a bit.  It was getting late in the dinner hour and the storm was showing no sign of quitting.  Kathi and I decided to eat our evening jambalaya meal cold.  

In the other two tents, Pat and Marybeth had also thrown in the towel on a meal cooked under the vestibule.  They were trying to prepare some soup but they were battling hail and ended up with more hail in the pot than out of the pot.  Claudia and Bec managed to get their stove fired up, however, in the process of getting their stove out of the storm, our safety girl Bec burnt her thumb.  

Sometime after midnight, the storm moved on and the wind stopped.  The skies cleared allowing the full moon to brighten the night.  I took this opportunity to blow the air mattress back up...and go outside for a quick trip to the bushes.  The evening sky was beautiful.  The moon was so bright that the stars looked dim.  I crawled back into the tent and fell asleep hoping the mattress held until morning.  Just as I drifted off to sleep, I awoke with a startle of a coyote’s lonely howl at the moon which was echoing about the alpine valley where we were camped.  I laid there with my eyes wide open, for the first time considered the other creatures we were sleeping amongst!

It is raining and hailing so hard you can no longer see the mountain across the way.