Jen and I spent a week in mid-July in the San Miguel Mountains (southern San Juan National Forest) and started the trip with some backpacking into the Lizard Head Wilderness area just south of Telluride, CO, which includes
Mt. Wilson (14,252 ft) and
El Diente (14,160 ft). The kids were safely off to visit family out of state and we revelled in the idea of a week alone together, outside, enjoying each other's company and the beauty of the mountains in and around Telluride. After a brief dinner refuelling stop at the
Cypress Cafe in Durango, where we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves enjoying live jazz at dusk in a super chill courtyard patio after a long nine hour drive, we made it to the
Kilpatrick trailhead around 10:30pm. After stuffing our packs, we hit the trail by headlamp and made a quick camp at the edge of an alpine spruce glade about a mile up the trail. We fell asleep to sounds of the Upper Dolores River and metronome-like rythm of mountain crickets. Morning eventually came for us (thankfully at 11am, which never happens at home) and we crawled out of our bags, made tea and coffee on the JetBoil in the vestibule, then packed our gear and methodically hiked our way up the valley.
We meandered our way up a topographic bench perched above the river that followed the main axis of the valley, which was exploding with alpine greenery. At lunchtime, we spent twenty minutes at a waterfall and caught enough pan-size brook trout for a solid dinner. The fly pattern of choice was a
rainbow warrior nymph that I’ve been tying recently. We eventually made it up to treeline and into the hanging valley below
Navajo Lake, only to discover an amazing camp spot within an old spruce forest, perched on the edge of a 100-foot granite cliff and adjacent to a waterfall. Unexpectedly perfect. After building a warm fire, I hiked down to the river to clean the fish. Jen then prepared the fish in foil with olive oil, red pepper, Cajun jerk and all-seasoning spices. Oh my god... it's my new favorite way to cook trout. While the fish cooked over the embers, I whooped Jen's butt at a game of travel backammon.
In the morning, we made breakfast, then hiked the short 0.5 mile up to Navajo Lake (11,160 ft). Jen suffered through a 20 minute fly fishing lesson, then we headed back, broke down camp and began the hike out. After arriving back at the car and freshening up with baby wipes and clean clothes, we began making our way out of the forest toward Mountain Village above Telluride. Unfortunately, we only made it a few miles before running into a forest service ranger, who stopped and informed us that they were in the process of extracting a Toyota Corolla by tow truck cable that had plunged about 600 feet down a steep gully through a dense aspen stand at a bend in the road. Apparently, judging by the tire tracks, some guy drove right off the edge and somehow lived to tell the story. They found him wandering along the side of the road on the main highway with a major head injury, after he crawled his way back up to steep gully in the middle of the night and walked his way down the mountain in total darkness, later to be found by a passerby at 9am the next morning. We spent an hour watching the tow truck pull the mangled car up the gully, over stumps and impossible looking boulders. When the car finally made it back onto the dirt road, the ranger's first words while staring into the backseat of the car were, "Is that a bong?" After further inspection, he managed to pull out a glass bong, a pipe and a half-filled tall boy of Miller Light. Hmmm. Mystery solved.
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