Backpacking “Minimoon” in the San Juans Mountains
We got married a few weeks ago (!!) and to celebrate our marriage we took a week off of work for a “mini honeymoon” trip. It was a very Allie & Grady plan for a mini moon - 7 days of backpacking in one of Colorado’s most remote wilderness areas with most of the trek and camping above 12000 ft. We spent time in this area in 2020 doing some more well known itineraries, but have a lot more adventures mapped out in this area & we were excited to have a longer duration to go deeper into these vast wilderness areas.
We had dinner at one of our favorite Colorado restaurants, the Sherpa Cafe in Gunnison, and camped near Montrose. After some coffee & bagels to fuel us for the day ahead we were heading down towards the San Juan’s. We always forget how beautiful Ouray is and its picturesque setting amazes us every time.
On our hike in for day 1 we saw the train twice! Once, it was further away and we could see it looking down from the trail and the second time we coincidentally had just crossed over the train tracks so we had an unobstructed view.
We enjoyed our extra salt bagel from breakfast while watching the train and commented that these salt bagels are a great day one lunch! They kind of taste like a mix between a soft pretzel and a bagel so they’re tasty to eat plain and help recoup some of the salt you lose hiking at elevation.
The first part of the hike was mostly all on trail. We passed a number of hikers and climbers early who used the trail for climbing access. We saw that someone had dropped a climbing shoe on the trail and assumed it belonged of the two climbers who had recently passed us going the other direction. We set it perched in the middle of the trail so it would be easy to spot.
About another mile into the hike after we had turned off onto a less defined trail we saw another one of the same climbing shoes. A group was coming down as we were going up and they identified that the shoes probably belonged to a guided climbing group heading our way but a bit ahead of us. One of the guys in that group decided to go pick up the other shoe, drop his pack, and run both shoes up to the group. It was a super kind thing to do, but we saw him coming back down and he had to go up a long ways to catch them. I bet he saved that groups climbing trip though.
When we arrived to our night 1 campsite we had clocked about 3000 ft and 10 miles with 77 lbs of backpacks between the two of us. It was a long first day! The sun was brightly shining for the first 30 min after arriving to camp before it dipped behind the high mountains, disappearing early for the day. We set up camp, I iced my ankle where it’s still bothering me from when I rolled it on the last day in Alaska, and we made some taste of Thai noodles for dinner. They don’t quite optimize the calories per weight ratio, but they’re easy, tasty, and we try to keep them to a first nights dinner because of the extra weight.
We had turmeric honey chai herbal tea (one of our new favorites to help muscles and joints after hiking) and played Monopoly Deal. Grady won 2:0 so I have some catching up to do. We reviewed the plan for day 2 before going to sleep and originally, we thought it’d be great and a piece of cake but Grady drew the line backwards so determined we were in for another 3k vert day tomorrow.
We didn’t sleep very well the first night because there was a ton of wind overnight that was rippling against the tent walls. The forecast called for very little wind - especially overnight - so we made the mistake of not packing ear plugs, even those are a normal staple on our packing list. We will never go backpacking above tree line without ear plugs again.
The day two trek didn’t look too bad on paper, but it was a lot of up and down with big stretches of steep uphill and downhill on rocky tallus. The terrain made the hike far more exhausting than we were anticipating. We heard climbers on the 13k peaks above us, but never saw them. We made our way up the valley and navigated a steel off trail pass with ease. From there, we found a little goat trail that took us most of the way in the next valley until we had to inevitably do some side hilling. After reaching our low elevation for the day we started to ascend again. The clouds were looking ominous so we sent for another weather text from our inreach before ascending the next 13000 ft pass where we’d be very exposed to the elements. Despite feeling some rain drops the weather text held firm to 0% chance of rain. We figured it would probably be scattered and we weren’t seeing signs of thunder or lightning so we continued. Thankfully, the weather held off.
After a lot of up and down on difficult terrain and four passes on the day - we were wiped when we got to camp. Even at 5 pm, it was really windy so we scouted out a good spot for our tent. We found a spot with a small existing wind fortress and Grady addressed some of the “structural inefficiencies” to build us a taller, stronger wind shelter. We were about as prepared as we could be.
It was so windy and cold that in the less than 30 seconds between taking the boiling ramen out of the pot and putting it in the bowl - it was already cold. By 7 pm it was freezing and we opted to set up our chairs inside the tent to be able to have our legs in our sleeping bags and seek shelter from the wind. We played 2 more rounds of monopoly deal and I did not improve my winning ratio - it dropped to Grady 4: Allie 0.
Despite all of our wind preparations, the wind was really strong and loud overnight. We bundled up deep in our sleeping bags with all of our layers on to prepare for the temps we predicted would be sub 30 degrees. Thankfully, the temperature preparations helped and we weren’t cold, but we didn’t sleep very well with the sound of the wind - especially Grady. He went back to sleep after some early morning sunrise photos and we had a lazier morning now that our day 3 would be shorter and more manageable.
Grady still wasn’t feeling great as the morning went on so we kept to the plan of a shorter day three. It enabled us to keep all options open for days 4-7 based on how Grady was feeling - so we figured it was the best option. When we got to the lake for camp 3 we spent a lot of time trying to pick the best spot for the tent that would be most wind protected. Camping at 12,700 feet, far above tree line, doesn’t give you a lot of cover from the elements so we tried our best to find a protected spot. We were able to put our tent up against a rock wall and built some additional barriers to keep the wind from loudly flapping against the walls of our tent. We really felt like we gave it our best effort to protect it from the wind. After some time hanging around camp we ventured out to take photos. The clouds were like something out of Toy Story - you couldn’t have drawn a more perfect blue sky with puffy white clouds if you tried.
The rock wall fortress we built was a success. We couldn’t hear the wind and slept for 12 hours with the best sleep of the trip. The sun didn’t hit the tent until 9 am so we hung around camp longer because it was so cold in the morning - we think the overnight low was around freezing. Grady was feeling better in the morning so we decided to press on for our next objective, but things took a turn quickly. To use our friend Nate’s expression - on Day 4, I carried the boats. Basically, I had to keep the team afloat. Grady was feeling lethargic, nauseous, and just really tired so it made an already challenging day even harder.
But we didn’t think today would be a very hard day on paper - 5 miles and 2000 vert off trail, but the terrain proved us wrong. We started off with going up a tallus field and then down 2200 feet of a steep boulder and scree field. We thought things would improve from there when we found a light use trail, but continued to lose and find it along the way. We picked up a real trail for about 30 minutes, but when we needed to veer off towards our destination it quickly turned into bushwhacking in some deep willows. We felt every step of those 1500 ft up at the end - especially Grady. In his words he almost didn’t make it up there. I tried to “carry the boats” by leading the route so Grady could just walk and follow and by keeping spirits high, but it was a tough day all around. Sometimes we look at stats and think of what we can do on trail versus off trail, but today was a great reminder that not all off trail is equal and some terrain is HARD.
When we (finally) arrived to the lake we found a grassy, wind protected spot to set up the tent. We quickly housed what the FDA would consider 4 serving sizes of Annie’s Mac and Cheese each and promptly went to sleep at 7 pm.
On the 5th day we identified three possible destinations for the day. There were two options for intermediary camp sites and the third option was to hike the full 15 miles out from this remote, off trail lake. Our plan was to assess how we were feeling at each spot and decide then how far to go.
We got moving quickly after waking up and started hiking. We knocked out the off-trail ascent quickly and rewarded ourselves with breakfast and coffee from the top of that first portion of the hike. We took frequent breaks to help the day feel more manageable and retain our energy - it helped a lot.
As we navigated the above treeline plateaus, the vistas became more and more expansive. In some ways it felt like we were in a different place in time. After a few miles we met up with a trail which was very welcomed. It was far easier descending on the switchbacks than the steep scree fields we had been ascending and descending much of the trip.
We started hurting before arriving to our destination option #1 - which wasn’t boding well for our projected day 5 mileage. We played 20 questions to distract ourselves from the discomfort and took a lunch break at the option #1 spot. We decided to push forward along the river to option #2. We arrived to that potential camp site at 2:40 pm and based on timing alone - we decided to continue on. At that point, we’d already done more than 10 miles on the day. The last 4+ miles and 2000 feet of vert were challenging to say the least - especially given this was our fifth day with heavy packs and a lot of off trail mileage. We counted the switchbacks to motivate us - “Only 10 more switchbacks until a break!” We finally finished the hike at 4:40 pm and hopped in the lake so that we could quickly clean up and avoid being ejected by society upon our return. We found a brewery in town to grab pizza and watch the NFL season opener. It was a great way to wrap up a very “us” mini honeymoon before our full honeymoon this winter.