One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: May 29, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1988_1030-31_MaunaKea.htm)
Three early-season local adventures, including a very rare sighting of a mountain lion... Horsetooth Mountain, Greyrock Peak, and Palisade Mountain, all near Fort Collins, Colorado.
After I did aerobic workouts at Hewlett-Packard five days in a row (groan) for the first time ever, Saturday dawned clear, warm, and beautiful. And to my surprise, despite lots of advertising, nobody, CMC member or otherwise, had signed up to join me on a morning hike up Horsetooth Mountain west of Fort Collins. So... I put it off until the afternoon.
It was my 16th visit to the summit in 12 years. I started from the county parking lot to the south (now $4 to park there, ouch) [2023: Now Larimer County charges $10] at 1310 and was on top in one hour less half a minute. That's a good but not astonishing time. Friends had run the 2.75 miles to the summit in 25 minutes! Still, I was surprised I could cover the distance and gain 1500' that fast -- I wore hiking boots and a 20 pound day pack, and I didn't start out intending to race.
This time up I hoped to visit the south tooth, the south gap, the center tooth, the north gap, and the north tooth, in succession; what I call the "grand tour". I did all that except for reaching the top of the center tooth. The vertical crack leading to the summit contains several difficult, exposed moves. "Discretion is the better part of valor." Still, it was fun exploring around the summit for a couple of hours on a gorgeous spring day.
I headed directly back down the drainage to Spring Creek and turned right to the regular trail. It took over an hour to mosey back.
The weather was almost as nice as the day before. Why not another workout? Susanne Cochran and I met up with 12 members of the Mosaic Outdoor Mountain Club of Denver to "guest" on their hike. "Mosaic", you ask? As in, "Moses was the first recorded hiker." It was a Jewish singles outdoors club! It had just formed in March. A fun bunch of people, it turned out.
The trailhead was well-marked, about 10 miles up the Poudre Canyon. We started north across the bridge and up the trail at 0940 and reached the summit, 2060' higher, 2:50 later. It was a pleasant three-mile hike on a nice trail, but already too warm on a hot spring day. The route proceeded almost due north to the north end of the summit massif, then back along the top of it to the true summit.
On top of Greyrock Peak, one of the bunch donned an amazing get-up for club publicity photos: A bathrobe, a turban, a pair of "stone tablets", and a ram's horn, plus an Israeli flag and a club flag (sort of), on a flagpole concocted from a pair of ski poles. The reflective sunglasses were the perfect touch...
There was a large pond just below Greyrock's summit, surrounded by boulders. It was a marvelous place to go wading on a warm day.
Another beautiful weekend day (in contrast to the rain the weekend before)... David Wolpert, Patti Cummings, and I parked at the Idylwilde Dam in the Big Thompson Canyon, several miles below Drake. We started up the gully across from the dam at around 1015 and repeated, more or less, the tough off-trail bushwhacking climb I made alone two years ago.
I hoped we could pick a route next to the palisades (the rugged cliffs for which the peak is named) that would not require much scrambling. But it was unavoidable. We went a little more east than I did the last time, and took more breaks, so gaining the 2300' to the summit consumed 3.5 hours this time instead of 2.5.
We did a lot of dusty bushwhacking and scrambling up steep rocks. Hence the cool breezes were welcome. By going further east I think we actually ran into more rough terrain than if we'd found a simple and more direct gully to the summit ridge. We saw a variety of wildflowers and even a couple of old antlers -- one so old, lichen grew on it.
The peak itself of Palisade Mountain was a small rocky knob surrounded by a complexity of exposed stonework over a large area. It was a wonderful place to relax for an hour and a half. It sat between the plains and the high, snow-covered backbone peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Supposedly there was a trail down to the north and west. We decided to return that way. The trail was hard to find, and would have been something of a detour anyway (like 6-8 miles!) We ended up scrambling and bushwhacking down pretty much due west for an hour. This took us towards some acreages in the gorgeous high meadows north of the Big Thompson Canyon and west of the peak.
We encountered a large group of people partying at the end of a dirt road. We went from wilderness to civilization, and back into wilderness again as we continued south over a saddle and down toward the Big Thompson River.
I hoped this direct route would not be too steep. It turned out to be a lovely, grassy and rocky gully, but also a plummeting chute. Several hundred feet down, we noticed the dry bones of a large deer that was apparently dead only a couple of months. The head and some fur was intact. A little further down, happening to look in the right direction at the right time, a blur of motion caught my eye.
Something big and furry bounded across the gully from our right to left, several hundred feet lower. I yelled out, "Holy s---! What is that? A wolf, or a bobcat?" We all paused. Whatever it was, it stopped in tall grass under a pine tree well below us. It was a small, dark blob, quite far away -- but obviously an immense creature.
It didn't move for a while. I was afraid to move myself. If I took my eyes off it, it might vanish while I wasn't looking. After a minute I found a rock, sat down, and got out my binoculars. So did David, perhaps thirty feet lower.
I peered at the dark spot and saw something like two rounded ears and a big dark face. But it just "didn't compute". It was too big, considering the distance. I thought I saw a log or something. I took away the binoculars and confirmed I was pointing to the right place. Yup. Focused on it again. Wow! I gazed into the eyes of the King of Beasts -- a mountain lion -- impossibly huge. That face must have been 16 inches across!
It was like a lion you might see in the zoo or circus, and every bit as large, but a dark brownish-gray, with no mane apparent. I couldn't see much of the body because it faced us... watching us. We studied it and it stared at us for about ten minutes. It shifted occasionally. Finally it stood up, turned around, gracefully sauntered away from us, and vanished behind some trees. Its body must have been six feet long.
We had little choice but to continue down the narrowing gully the lion called home. The apprehension was palpable, visceral. "What if it's a she, and she's got cubs?" We picked our way down slowly, staying close together on the opposite side of the gully, and avoiding any overhanging rocks that might constitute a den.
We noticed a large, dark red mess on the other side of the gully. It was the gutted remains of another deer, the rib cage still blood-red, the legs askew. All our senses were attuned as we descended, and we made nervous jokes.
As expected, we didn't see another sign of the beast. I'm sure it watched us. We passed about 100' from where it had sat. We paid close attention to numerous small caves across the gully, suddenly of great interest to us. Further down we had to join the valley floor to pass through a narrow, steep-walled gap. An eerie feeling.
Past there, I thought we were out of the lion's domain... But we passed several other jumbles of bleached deer bones further down... Skulls, spines, and broken legs. But we'd never have seen the lion if I hadn't happened to catch it bounding across our path. I wondered how close I'd been to one before, on how many occasions, with no inkling.
On reaching the road (US 34) at the hamlet of Midway, I chatted with a couple sitting on their porch by the river. "Oh yes," they said, "a lion killed a goat right across the street, last summer. Big critter; it dragged the goat a fair distance."
We reached the car 3.5 hours after leaving the summit, quite tired. The steep, complicated terrain encountered both coming and going had been enough adventure, without meeting the landlord! I'd long hoped to see a lion in the wild. In 12 years of Colorado climbing, I'd come across bighorn sheep, mountain goats, ptarmigan, marmots, pikas, even two porcupines and a fox (I think). But I never expected to get a good look at such an enormous, awe-inspiring creature as a mature mountain lion.
(Next trip report: 1989_0604_QuandaryPeak.htm)