Aspen and stranger places

7/23/01

Aspen.  Snooty people, expensive restaurants and attitude.  Or, if you do it right, awesome hikes, camp food, and no crowds.  Our weekend trip to Aspen consisted of a whirlwind of hikes.  First, we cruised over to Aspen on Friday night and car-camped at a place a friend suggested, up by McClure Pass.  Go to Carbondale, turn right on 133, and head up to McClure Pass.  There's a dirt road up there that is car-friendly and has many spots to camp along it.  The view on the drive up to the pass is awesome, too.  After making camp here on Friday, we took a short hike around the top of the pass and enjoyed the views.

On Saturday, we got an early start and drove over to Lost Man Trailhead on the way up to Independence Pass.  Well, we started off early, but that's kind of a long drive from McClure Pass, so we didn't actually start the hike until about 10.  Several hikes start from Lost Man Trailhead, but we were hiking up past Midway Lake to Midway Pass.  It was a nice hike, starting off with a lot of switchbacks (you gain about 1000 feet in a mile), and then leveling off to where you spend a lot of the hike above treeline, walking along a gentle ridge, with views in every direction.  In one direction, you can see the Maroon Bells, Pyramid and Electric Pass.  It's a popular hike, but we only saw about 5 other people so I wouldn't worry about crowds.  Dog friendly, easy for them to hike.  There's not water every step of the way, but enough that your dog can get most of his water from the trail.

After our Midway Pass hike, we decided to drive the rest of the way up Independence Pass.  This is absolutely beautiful and you can start several hikes from the parking area at the top of the pass.  Even if you don't plan on hiking, it's worth driving up the narrow twisty Rt 82 for the view from the top.

Sunday, we planned to do a short dayhike and drive home, so we headed early (7:00) to the Maroon Bells parking lot, which closes to cars at 8:30 in the summer.  We hiked past Maroon Lake (right at the trailhead) to Crater Lake, and then kept going up Minnehaha Gulch to Willow Pass.  This is a beautiful hike, and you get nice views of Pyramid and both Bells, as well as many other mountains in the area.  Wildflowers were in abundance.  This turned out to be such a nice hike that we really wished we could have kept going and camped at Willow Lake (about 1 1/2 miles past Willow Pass).  The trail is alternately steep and then relenting, but overall is a fairly tough trail, especially with full pack.  Be sufficiently bad-ass to pack in on this trail, but the rewards are worth it!

After finishing the hike and getting back to the car (12:00, and by this time we hiked by a million people on their way to Crater Lake) we head back to reality, including an hour sit in dead-stop traffic near Idaho Springs.  What is it with that tunnel?!

View from Midway

Dogs love hikes

Maroon Lake