Trip Report
La Plata would be the first in what I expect to be many more
"freebies!" What is a "freebie?" Well, I'm glad that you
asked. Since Scott and I must travel from Ohio each year for our
Colorado fun, we have two choices for our return flight strategy.
With the time change of 3 hours, we lose time, no matter when we
leave. We can either leave early and get home late, or we can
leave later in the afternoon, and get home really late. Either
way, our day is shot. BUT, not if we can somehow get in another
14er before we fly out. That is a "freebie!" LaPlata would
be our first chance to test out the "freebie theory!"
Our flight was a 4 pm flight leaving out of Colorado Springs. We
were coming from the Sangre DeCristos area. We pondered the idea
of doing Humbolt, but decided that the South Colony trailhead road was
too much of an unknown. We'd heard that it could take anywhere
from 30 minutes to 2 hours to get down that road. We just
couldn't afford that kind of variable in our schedule. So, we
decided to head out to the Sawatch and grab one of my last few out
there - LaPlata. So, we made the drive to the Sawatch, we checked
into a cheap hotel at the intersection of 91 and 82 - just north of
Buena Vista. We scouted out the Lake Creek Trailhead, and found
out that it was directly off of 82 - a paved road. We estimated
that we could get up at 4 am, bang out LaPlata in 5 or 6 hours,
then clean up and head to the airport. The best layed
plans... well, they work out pretty good...
We got up around 3:30 am, drove down to the trailhead, and started up
around 4:10. The start of the Lake Creek Trailhead goes down a
dirt road, and across private property. It is ok to travel this
way, but I guess it is not cool to park on the dirt road. It was
only a bit of a ways down the road anyway. Since we had a dark
start, we couldn't see much for a very long time. It was
interesting on the descent seeing things that we didn't see on the way
up. I should mention at this point that Scotty's camera died
yesterday on Challenger and Kit. So, the photos for this report
are crumby shots from my video camera.
As I said, we started in the dark. Since this was our 5th day of
climbing, both of us were feeling pretty strong. Luckily the path
is pretty obvious. So, we didn't have any problems keeping on the
trail, even in the pitch dark, by headlamp. Since we were on a
timeline, we were moving pretty fast, and couldn't afford any route
complications. There weren't any.
About the time that it started to get light out, we busted out of the
woods, and were running parallel to the main ridge - on our left.
As the sun came up, we had just made the top of the ridge, and got an
awesome view of the sun coming over the Ellingwood ridge. We were
on the ridge around 6 am. We continued up the ridge. The
ridge to the summit was a very mild class 2. Ultimately, we made
the summit just after 7 am - 3 hours to the summit. We were in
good shape to make our 5 to 6 hour time limit.
We only spent about 10 minutes on top, then headed back down the
ridge. We made it to the top of the ridge in an hour (just after
8 am). Then, we made it back to the trailhead in about 1 hour 30
minutes (about 9:45 am). We were in awesome shape for
timing. On the way down, we noticed an outstanding waterfall
underneath the trailhead bridge crossing. Underneath the bridge,
the rocks kind of funneled down to a small pass through for the water,
about 5 to 8 feet wide. The water flowing through this funneled
down area was flowing through with so much power. It was awesome.
Scotty and jumped into the car, made the 2.5 hour drive to COS, and
were in plenty of time for our flight... "Freebies rule!"
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Pictures
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