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Published: June 30th 2017
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Looking to the north
We hiked off to the right of this hill Geo: 38.8279, -106.409
(Thank goodness there's no C.W. McCall song about this one.)
Since we saw Independence Pass last year, we decided to take on Cottonwood this time, even though it meant missing a stage of the race (Montrose->Crested Butte).
If you'd told us we would end up oversleeping, while sleeping in the back of the Durango on an air mattress, I'd have laughed.But that's what happened. We woke up at about 8:30 or so, and we'd kinda' planned to be on the road by then. We packed up, decided to forego the hot beverages and just nosh a bar on the way, and hit the road.
In Gunnison, McDonald's was our target, as they have a) breakfast and b) wi-fi. I had some travel arrangements to make for my clients, before we went off-grid again. After a McMuffin, we were ready to see what the town's celebration was all about.
They had a small block barricaded, with a jumbotron playing the action, and several vendors lined up. We picked up a Queen Stage camp chair, partly as a souvenir, and partly because one of the chairs we brought with us didn't have a cupholder, and this one did. That's a good enough reason, right?
Since we
couldn't find anyone who could tell us just where the road to the pass was closed (at 209 across from Taylor Park Reservoir, as it turns out), we decided to err on the side of caution and get going earlier than later. After a stop at the grocery store, we were on our way.
(by the way -- knowing that you can fill a water container at the grocery store is a useful thing).
We paused at the turnoff from Almont to ask the state patrolman when they were closing the road -- his answer of "3:00" matched up with the dozen or so printed things we'd seen that said the road closed at 3. But the question of "exactly where?" hadn't quite been cleared up.
After surviving the hideous mess that was the 8 miles of road construction outside of Almont (HOW did they make that passable overnight?!?), we pulled up to the intersection of 73 & 209 as the water truck was closing the barricades.
I jumped out of the car, and pleaded my case with the driver: I could show him 7 pieces of paper that all said "3:00", I said. He waved us on, and just advised to stay ahead
A wider look off to the east
This will be the downhill side the next day of him.
Gratefully, we took the lead, and started up the pass.
We rolled up to the pass around 3:00, and found our home for the next 24 hours. There were about a dozen other cars up there with us, including a couple of RVs/campers. We introduced ourselves to the neighbors, and made ourselves sandwiches for a late lunch.
There's a trail up the hill to the north, so we took a bit of a hike to see what we could see. Holy cow, hiking at 12,000 feet takes the wind out of you!
A car of 3 credentialed photographers pulled in next to us, and we made small talk. Then they muttered that they'd failed to plan for food, and had just a couple of sandwiches & some fruit. I offered oatmeal in the morning, as that's about all we had.
For dinner, we were eating some freeze-dried meals that we'd not yet taken backpacking. As I started to dig my fork into my chicken & rice, it occurred to me that these were pretty big meals, and we had one left over, so we made sure each of them got a little something in their bellies.
It was an early night, as there's
Dejo, overlooking the wilderness
from the trail to the north -- pristine wilderness down this valley -- just beautiful just not a whole lot to do up on top of a 12,000 foot pass.
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