Saturday Sopris Summit

"The early bird gets the summit," is the mantra I repeated to myself as I rolled out of bed at 2:30 am. Hitting the trail at 3:00 am was rough, and even though there was a full moon, we still needed headlamps. The trail was rocky and hiking it in the dark was not ideal, but we hiked on.

Finding ourselves above tree-line as the sun began to rise made hiking in the dark for 3 hours totally worth it! It was a magnificent sunrise; one I won't ever forget.

Sopris defeated me last summer, and I was determined to summit that stubborn mountain this summer. From the trailhead to the summit the hike is around 13 miles roundtrip. When you combine that with the intense elevation gain it makes for a really long day. The summit of Mount Sopris stands at 12,966' high.

We reached the summit around 9:00 am, and were happily surprised by the lack of wind - and people! We spent an hour alone on the summit of Mount Sopris sharing snacks and celebratory beer!

We began our decent at 10:00 am and were thrilled when we made it to Thomas Lakes around noon. We took a long break at the lakes and as the storm clouds began rolling in we decided to keep heading down to the car.

The last 2 1/2 miles of the hike felt like an eternity, but we kept trucking none-the-less. It was the perfect Saturday to summit Sopris, and I couldn't be more excited to have made it to the top!

Avalanche Creek to East Fork

Avalanche Creek Trail is located just outside Carbondale, CO and is the perfect early season backpack trip as the trailhead begins at only 7,310 feet, and there are plenty of camping options along the way.

The trail is super popular, but we lucked out on our hike in seeing only one jogger about 5 miles into the wilderness. The jogger let us know that he had run into snow several miles past Duley Park (our camping destination). We knew there was going to be snow, and actually were surprised to find there wasn't as much snow as we thought there would be.

We hiked another half mile to Duley Park before dropping our packs and having lunch. After lunch we decided to hike up to East Fork. We quickly found that the trail past Duley Park was rather poorly maintained as we hopped logs and fallen trees. We crossed a couple of snow patches, none of them were too large, and made it to East Fork rather quickly. After exploring a bit further, we decided to turn around.

We headed back to Duley Park, where we camped for the night and set up our tent just in time for an afternoon shower. Luckily the storm moved out just as quickly as it moved in, so we didn't have to hunker down in the tent long. 

It was the perfect first trip of the season, and it has us eagerly anticipating many more backpacking adventures in the high country this summer.