A bit later I was hanging out in the back of the car when I looked up and walking right toward me was a group of 3 goats.  They got pretty close:

They proceeded to hang around for over half an hour.  At one point I sat in the back of the car with the hatch open and they literally walked right next to me.  I had to scare them off because I thought one was going to grab something out of the back of the car and run off with it.  The picture below is blurry but you get the idea.

Finally as it was getting dark the goats started to wander off.  Suddenly I turned around, and 5 feet away from my car was a red Fox.  I moved to grab my camera but he got startled and trotted off, so I was only able to get this one blurry picture of him before he was gone.

Not a bad evening.  Once dark had set in I crawled into bed and fell asleep almost immediately, something that rarely happens for me (it usually takes an hour or two before I drift off).  Suddenly, around 11 PM I was startled out of a deep sleep.  I was rather disoriented so it took me a minute to figure out that there was something….some noise……oh…….THAT noise.  Sigh.  I pulled on my shoes, grabbed a headlamp and the bear spray, and jumped out of the car.  I quickly looked around the car and there was no waddling critter to be seen.  So I laid down in front of the car and sure enough – another ugly porcupine.  He was a brave little fella – they usually run off as soon as you open the door.  He had picked the wrong time to be brave.  From a few feet away I gave him a full blast of Grizzly grade pepper spray right in the face.  A few seconds later I heard the coughing and wheezing that let me know I had got him good.  Yes, I am now accustomed to the sound of a wheezing porcupine.  As he ran off I chased him for a bit and tried to hit him again with the spray (just for good measure) but it was pretty windy so I didn’t manage to get him.  With that done, I hoped that was all I would hear from that porcupine for the rest of the night.  I crawled back in to bed.  Around 3 AM I suddenly awoke and thought I heard something.  Once again I hoppped out of the car to look around – but this time found nothing.  A little paranoid perhaps?  I searched in a wide circle around the car just in case something had run off before I had seen it, but things looked clear.  Back to bed.

I woke up just after sunrise and was eating a few lousy Little Debbie’s donuts when I looked over and there was a new trio of goats approaching.  This time it was a momma and two kids.  The two little ones were hilarious to watch – it is the best example of frolicking I have ever seen.  They were bounding around the area and jumping on each other.  Mommy goat was more interested in looking for pee stains.  When I finally got out of the car they seemed a bit more nervous, though they still approached within 15 yards of me.  The mother was acting a little strange.  Every once in a while she would stamp a foot heavily.  Not in the funny way that deer do when they are nervous – more like a “Think what it would do if I stamped on your head like this” kind of way.  I’m not sure if goats are as protective of their young as, say, bears are, but I decided not to stick around and find out.

Let’s see…..oh yeah, I went and climbed a mountain.  It was a really nice hike up a nice basin.  Yatta Yatta….big views….Maroon Bells clearly visible…etc, etc.  When I returned to the car there was one last friendly goat who just wanted to check that I had made it back ok.

Right next to Emerald Peak is Iowa Peak – a named 13er, but it doesn’t have enough prominence to receive an official rank (it only rises 260′ above the saddle with its higher neighbor Missouri).  Nevertheless, I felt obligated to climb it.  Now the easiest way to climb these two peaks from Missouri Gulch is to head over Elkhead Pass (13,200′), travel cross country to the two peaks, and then return over Elkhead Pass.  As it turns out, going over Missouri Mountain and down the ridge to Iowa Peak is only a couple hundred extra feet of elevation while providing a more interesting route and allowing you to brag about bagging another 14er.  So the plan was to go in over Missouri, bag the two 13ers, and return over Elkhead Pass.  Now it just so happens that from 13,200′ at Elkhead Pass you are less than 1000′ below the summit of Belford which is kinda sorta on the way out.  And if you are on Belford, for another 1400′ one can also climb Oxford, which is a little out of the way but it would be kind of embarrassing to climb Belford and not climb Oxford.  And getting those two peaks would let you brag even more.  So with that in the back of my mind, I set my alarm for 4:40 AM and went to bed.

After thinking about it some more, I turned my clock back to 5:30 AM before falling asleep.  I am not a fan of early starts.  Thus, I wasn’t on the trail until 6:00 AM the following morning.  It was just light enough that I didn’t need a headlamp.  My goal for today was to try and pace myself and eat a little better.  Typically I hike at two speeds – on or off.  It is better, however, to keep an easier pace – this will keep you fresher and stronger over the course of a day.  I also lots of times don’t really stop to eat anything (I often get to the summit and have eaten nothing more than a pack of GU and a few peanuts or something like that).  So my goal was to move at a slower pace and eat more consistently early on.

The trail starts with about 1500′ of fairly steep ascent.  I started the morning eating some Frosted Mini-wheats and a pack of GU.  Nothing like some vanilla GU to get your day started.  On the initial ascent I made sure to take it easy – I would even pace myself off some other groups of hikers on the trail.  I usually blow past people in the morning, but I did my best not to pass people too quickly (most people stop and take breaks along the way, which isn’t really my thing, so I ended up passing most everyone on the trail anyways).  Part way up the gulch I started to feel a little bit hungry and stopped immediately to eat a Mojo bar (can you tell I’m proud that I actually stopped to eat food when I was hungry?)  I was soon in the upper basin where I stopped to eat yet another gel.  This was a CLIF gel and it was one of the worst tasting gels I have ever had.  I think I’ll stick to GU from now on.  Another mile and 1500′ took me to the summit of Missouri.  The whole way I had to conciously tell myself to keep my pace easy.

On the summit of Missouri I checked my time – 3 hours 5 minutes for the first 4500′ of elevation, which is actually 5 minutes faster than when I did the same hike last September.  Nevertheless, my legs were feeling very fresh.  The pacing and consistent food intake seemed to be helping.  I chatted with two guys who were doing the Missouri-Belford-Oxford loop.  I figured I couldn’t be shown up by them.  After a 25 minute rest on the summit, making sure to eat and drink, I continued down the ridge toward Iowa.  It didn’t take long to reach this 13, 831′ peak.  I stopped long enough to sign the register and take some pictures and then continued toward Emerald Peak.  This was a beautiful section of ridge.  There’s no trail up there so it is classic Colorado alpine cross country travel.  As I started up Emerald Peak, I spotted two mountain goats up on the ridge, but by the time I got there they had disappeared to somewhere.  Higher up on the ridge I ran into quite a few pika the squeaked and hid under the rocks as I passed.  I spent 10-15 minutes on the top of Emerald Peak enjoying the view.

From Emerald Peak I cut across a section of the Pine Creek basin to get back to the Elkhead Pass trail.  Along the way I stopped at a nice alpine lake and refilled my water.  I was soon back on the trail and cruising up to Elkhead Pass.  Just below the pass I suddenly looked up, and there was my first Colorado sighting of a Bighorn Sheep!  I pulled out my camera to get a picture, then slowly continued toward her taking pictures along the way.  I was surprised that she didn’t run off right away.  Then I realized she was looking behind her and bleeting, so I looked over my shoulder and sure enough, there was baby Bighorn running up over the pass.  I was very excited to finally have seen some Bighorn.

At Elkhead Pass, I was still feeling pretty good, so I started up the trail toward Belford.  As I ascended I knew Oxford was also going to happen.  To get to Oxford from Elkhead pass requires climbing almost to the summit of Belford before descending a ridge and then ascending Oxford.  Then you have to repeat the ridge from Oxford to Belford to get the trail back into Missouri Gulch.  So off I went.  At the summit of Oxford I caught up to the two guys I had spoken with on Missouri.  We chatted for a while and before returning to Belford.  On Belford I met a family who had just reached the summit – 3 generations were represented and they even had a 4 year old who had climbed all the way up the mountain on his own!  Becky and Meg, it’s time to get those kids hiking.

Then it was time for the worst part of the day – the descent to the trailhead.  It’s 4500′ of steep downhill pounding to get out.  By the end my knees were feeling it a bit, but overall it actually went better than I had expected.  This time of year, while the temperature in the high country isn’t too bad, when I’m hiking out in the hot afternoon sun I tend to get a bit overheated.  And an overheated Dunbear is a cranky Dunbear.  Fortunately, there is a stream right next to the Missouri Gulch trailhead, so after getting back to the car I went down and stood in it for a while.  The cold-but-not-too-cold water felt great on my achy feet and dumping a bunch of water on my head helped drop my body temperature.  After that I ate two pieces of leftover pizza and a peanut butter and honey sandwich while drinking 1-2 liters of water to close out a good hike.  I checked the GPS which told me the day had been 16.2 miles with 8000′ of ascent for a 5 peak day.

–PICTURES–

After not sleeping very well through the night I had pushed back my wake-up time for an hour.  When the alarm went off, I pushed it back for another hour.  I finally roused myself, packed up, and headed up the trail around 8:30 AM.  It was a fairly short hike and the weather has been abnormally good this week, so I wasn’t worried about an early start.  The day’s goal was Grizzly Peak which has the honor of being the highest 13er in Colorado and being only 12 feet short of being a 14er.  What this means is that Grizzly sees only the tiniest fraction of the traffic that the 14ers see.  The route follows an old jeep road to its end at an abandoned mine at 12,000′ in McNasser Gulch.  It is a very quiet valley that doesn’t even see the usual ATV/jeep traffic on the roads like a lot of other places in Colorado.  In fact, I wouldn’t see any human or vehicle the entire hike.

Beyond the road to the mine you continue up into McNasser Gulch.  Since it gets so little traffic there is no trail up there – it’s just open alpine cross country travel.  From 12,500′ at the upper end of the basin, you then climb steeply north to gain the east ridge of Grizzly Peak.  Once on the ridge, you simply follow it to the summit, dodging a few towers along the way.  The view from the summit was….superb.  I’d like to officially take back all the mean things I have said about the Sawatch Range – the northern part of the range is really nice.  Grizzly sits right near the middle of this northern section, and it has a feeling of remoteness to it that few other Sawatch peaks do.  I sat up there for a while picking out all the peaks that I knew, counting over 20 14ers and a horde of 13ers.  I eventually wandered back down, enjoying the peace and quiet of the valley and the fields of wildflowers that are still going strong (usually they would be tapering off by this time of year, but with the late snow this year everything has been pushed back a bit).

Now I’m back in Buena Vista, one of my favorite little towns in Colorado.  The past week was spent in the Aspen area.  Over the course of the week I got to explore the town a little bit more and talk to some of the locals, all of which confirmed my initial opinion of Aspen – it is a stupid town.  Thank goodness for BV.  Heck, I may even treat myself to a $3.50 shower.  Oh, for those who may be concerned, I have greatly upped my shower frequency this year.  I’ve more than doubled my 1 shower a month average from last summer.

–Pictures–