West Elk Loop

Setting off on the first backpack trip of the season, we made our way up Kebler Pass to Horse Park (Cliff Creek Trail) and began our hike into the West Elk Wilderness. The trail was beautiful right off the bat, and we were greeted by some beautiful grazing deer. We made good time to Beckwith Pass, where we took a break to soak up the views. Four people on horseback passed us here on their way to Beckwith Bench, which sounds like a great hike, too.

After our break, we continued on toward Cliff Creek Trail. At some point, we lost the trail completely and found ourselves on a game trail. After much consultation with the compass, map and GPS, we discovered we were below the trail; we hike straight up what felt like a mountain and were relieved to reconnect with the trail. The trail was very muddy in spots, allowing and severely highlighting animal tracks. I kept finding bear tracks, and I began to get nervous. Around 5:30, we were pulling into the area we wanted to camp in, and, as I rounded the corner I heard two loud grunty, breathy, deep snorts or barks from the bushes. I hollered ahead to Justin, who came back, but thought maybe it was just a deer bounding away.

I had a sinking feeling that those snorts came from a bear, however. We began to set up camp in a beautiful meadow and cook dinner. Just as dinner was ready, I looked up, and saw a bear. The bear was about a hundred yards away, he was, grazing and sniffing the air while, all the while, watching us. This was my first real encounter with a bear, so naturally, I overreacted. I watched in a panic for close to an hour as the bear lingered beyond our camp. As the sun began to set, the bear sauntered off in the opposite direction of us, but I decided we just couldn't sleep there. We packed everything up, and hiked about another mile before setting up our tent in the dark. I didn't get much sleep that night.

The next morning, we hiked up to Sheep Lake, an out-and-back trail off of our loop. We spent some time at the lake snacking and filling water, before realizing we still had 6 miles to hike that day. We didn't realize two of those six would be through snowfields. We connected in with the Castle Pass Trail, which had some truly amazing views, and began our track up to the highest point of our trip, 11,000 feet. We anticipated some snow, but what we found was certainly more than we were hoping for. Justin post-holed us a trail for nearly two miles through deep snowfields. He was determined to make it over Castle Pass.

Our feet were sopping wet by the time we made it over the pass, and we were relieved to be heading back down into lower elevation. The views of the Castles from the other side of the pass were magnificent. We made it into a beautiful basin, and decided to set up camp for the night.

On our last day, we hiked up and over Swampy Pass and back over Beckwith Pass before descending back to Kebler Pass. Overall, the trip was 29 miles long with roughly 5000 feet of elevation gain. The path we took was from Horse Ranch Park (Cliff Creek Trail) to Beckwith Pass to Cliff Creek Trail to Castle Pass to Lowline Trail back to Beckwith. I highly recommend the trip as an early or late season backpack, as I hear it is a popular grazing area for livestock in the summer months.