Coming July 8th, 2015

As it slowly seems to becoming a pattern trips that involve just Kevin and I don't seem to go quite as planned. Our original plan was to hike Crown Peak in the Comanche Wilderness. Well that didn't go as planned; there was to much snow and we hadn't brought snow shoes. So we bailed on that plan and decided to attempt it from the North side; which of course did not go as planned to much snow. I did end up towing a jeep out of a rut up on the north side. This was all a bust so we decided to just look for any mountain we could go summit. We settled on West White Pine Mountain in the Poudre Wilderness. This proved to be much more difficult since the closet road was closed from the west end. This added 6 easily driven miles to the hike but that didn't stop us. We continued on with our quest to get away from people and summit some mountain. We march on and eventually began our ascent of the mountain but as the light was fading we decided to make camp for the night on the east face of the mountain overlooking Fort Collins. With some spectacular views we settled in for what proved to be a less windy night than we had been expecting. The next morning it was very cold. I still decided to try and get some good sunrise pics; sadly not from the summit. It all worked out as we headed up the mountain. We spotted some elk on the way up and then we reached some patchy snow. Then we trekked around on the summit which although only has one true summit it had many slight lower summits up near the top. We then reached the true summit  which had the remains of what appeared to be a burned fire tower. This was cool but with the wind and the time we decided to head out. 

Likability 6.5/10 This area has not recovered from the fire that came through this area 3 years ago so I would recommend going else where.

After a night of partying we decided that we were still up for an adventure. So we decided to go through with the plan to backpack to the Grey Rock Meadow. This was delayed due to awful road conditions; thanks to the large amount of snow that hit Colorado this past weekend. We got back to Fort Collins around 5:30 pm. We then took an hour and a half to get ready then it took an hour to get to the trailhead. Once there we began the much longer than normal trek to the meadow via the meadows loop. This began with everyone layered up. After the trail became steeper people began to drop layers. I had shed everything but at t-shirt and pants. It was great though it was only 10 degrees and snowing. We eventually made it to the meadow, but my GPS was not having it in the cold. (Should have kept it in my pack) This lead us to wander around the meadow a little until I got my GPS to work again then we followed it to the waypoint I had put there from a previous trip.  Then once at camp we set up the tent while some people got to work on a fire. Luckily we had decided to stop at a gas station and get some lighter fluid making the fire starting easy in the snow. Once camp was set up we began cooking dinner which was mostly reheating the great tamales from tamale kitchen. Then with the snow continued to fall so we began heading off to bed. After a night of ok sleep we awoke to more gorgeous snow on the ground. The only problem was that the temperature had dropped to around 0 or -5 when we woke up. It was bone chilling, but beautiful. We had a great breakfast of hash browns and you guessed it more tamale. Then we ate some oatmeal as we packed up camp and prepared for the epic journey out of the meadow. We began with the moderately short uphill climb to the top ridge boarding the meadow. Then came one of the most fun descents I have ever had where we ran/ sledded down the face of the ridge. It was awesome get down so quickly and have some much fun; as well as no one had been hurt during our rapid descent of the ridge. Then we had the trek through the valley back to the bridge to cross the river and return to my truck.

Likaility: 9/10 It was great notch in the belt to add snowshoe backpacking to my resume.

After spending all day in class me and Tom decided it would be good practice to go take some pictures of the sunset so we raced up to Duncan's Ridge which overlooks the beautiful Horsetooth Reservoir. 

Just a 4X4 adventure into the forest around of Colorado Springs. Have a great holiday season and stay safe in whatever adventures you may have planned for the season.