Day 028: Tangled Up in Wood

Pic: Found the snow line! Above Tanglewood Creek, Pike NF, CO. Larger image

After a week of comfortable but noisy luxury, I was ready to give my gracious Denver-area hosts a break (thanks Nat and Sarah! thanks Doug and Michelle! thanks Ben’s hotel points program!) and get out in the woods for a few days. The Flaming Lips show had been the last fixed date on my calendar. With no impending deadlines of any kind (except for running out of money eventually), I was eager to slow my pace of exploration even further.

I planned to visit a few more friends in Boulder so I didn’t want to stray too far. I had just driven through the Front Range west of Denver; those mountains still held an awful lot of snow. My trajectory in the coming weeks would lead me north to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks and I would hit Rocky Mountain NP on the way. Eastern Colorado is basically Kansas. This left me with Pike National Forest, a couple hours southwest of Denver.

I found some dispersed camping and a couple of trails near Tanglewood Creek. June had arrived; how cold could it possibly be at 9200 feet? Oh, it’s dumping big slushy hailstones? Ok.

The hike was… not awesome. It started pleasantly enough, following Tanglewood Creek through dense pine forest for the first mile or two:

Pic: I’ll stop the world and melt with you. Tanglewood Creek, Pike NF, CO

The route hugged the shady side of the valley, maximizing snow retention and jealously guarding any view of the surrounding mountains until I reached the tree line. There, the trail left the creek and switchbacked up to a saddle between Mt. Rosalie and Rosedale Peak. Well, that’s what the maps claimed anyway — this is where I lost any hint of the trail. No signs, no markers, no cairns, just snow and willows. I picked my way up the hillside for a while, got high enough for some view of the area, and abandoned my summit bid.

On the way down, my expert pathfinding had me postholing through rotten, waist-deep snow while whacking through head-high bushes. By the time I stumbled back onto the trail, which alternated from slippery freeze-thaw hardpack to wet stones perfectly-sized for rolling an ankle, I was wet and tired. I had also lost my Nalgene somewhere. On the bright side, I found a well-used trekking pole while crashing through a willow on the way down the hill.

I limped back to camp, where a thundershower greeted me just as I set my gear out to dry. Quite a reintroduction to the great outdoors.