THE LOST TENT CREEK HIKE:


Moon & mtns., looking northwest from Refrigerator Gulch back toward the Lost Creek drainage, bushwhack over.

It’s rare when people on this forum get together to share their common bond, a good backpack. Logistics and schedules are often hard to work out. But I finally had the opportunity in late June to join longtime-poster Ringtail (formerly known as food) on a hike in the area that he loves and knows best, The Lost Creek Wilderness in Pike Nat’l Forest southwest of Denver.


Three-and-a-half trails made up this 'lollipop' hike.

The hike’s highlight was a bushwhack through the Wilderness’ namesake, Lost Creek, that despite its difficulty, was awesome.


Ringtail heading into the willows and the wildest part of the hike on Lost Creek.

I felt privileged to tag along, since I was the first person to scramble down that creek with him -- on previous trips he had done it by himself. And on this trek I learned quite a bit, mostly from Ringtail.


Ringtail with his Six Moons Design Starlite pack at the start of his favorite part of Lost Creek.

To put the hike in dated, trivialized pop-history terms, I felt -- despite the closeness of our ages -- like Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid, that 1984 movie by the director of the original Rocky, although I don’t actually remember in the film Ralph losing his tent and becoming a better person for it. To explain that I better start at the beginning.

Ringtail and I had planned to hike in the Lost Creek Wilderness two years ago, but with my short-notice schedule we couldn’t work it out. But this spring we finally planned the trip on a Mon.-Wed. the third week of June. Originally Dondo, also on this forum, was to join us, but he couldn’t arrange his schedule and instead hiked nearby McCurdy Peak solo the week before us. (His excellent report and pix are posted in his McCurdy Peak entry in this Trip Reports category.)

On the Sunday before our hike, the forecast for the next day in the Tarryall Mountains (within the LCW) was an 80 per cent chance of snow, so I did some serious repacking. I’m a Florida boy, only in Denver for two years now, and I’m still wary of cold.

I was using a new pack for the trip, a Golite Odyssey, a light, but big pack that I stuffed with my down coat, wool gloves and a few more layers of clothes. I substituted the Tarptent Cloudburst 2 for my oldest tent, the smaller, warmer Peak 1. In retrospect that Odyssey pack was too big, and I plan on going back to my smaller, more traditionally-Golite Pinnacle on 3-day bps, and only bring out the Odyssey for longer hikes.

On Monday, we met (for the first time, BTW) at 10a at a Front Range park-n-ride for the trip to the trailhead. There was new snow above 10K, and Ringtail took this shot on the road a quarter-mile from the trailhead:


Ringtail's shot near the end of the 19-mile dirt road to the trailhead on June 20th.

But the precipitation in the mountains was over, and by evening the clouds would break up and we'd have blue skies for the rest of the trip.

We did a “lollipop” hike, heading down the gentler portion of Lost Creek on the Wigwam Trail to a fork and the start of our loop where Lost Creek goes southeast and the well-traveled Wigwam Trail heads northeast up East Lost Park. That southeast trail is marked on the Nat’l Geo Trails Illustrated map as unmaintained, and eventually shown fizzling out as Lost Creek enters a serpentine canyon of Pikes Peak granite walls.


The trailless shortcut down Lost Creek to the McCurdy Park trail.

Ringtail said we’d be bushwhacking, and we were. Lost Creek was cascading over the rocks, but not yet doing its disappearing act.


Falls in the upper part of Lost Creek.


Ringtail on granite in aspens.

A creek flowed in from the west, and on level ground at the confluence, we set up camp for the night between boulders the size of Boulder Mcmansions. Ringtail found two trees for his Blackbird hammock, and I set my old Peak 1 up near the creek.


Ringtail's Blackbird in the afternoon light.

At the evening meal, I was able to see Ringtail’s Caldera Cone stove in action (it’s in the video); I’ve got to get one!

We were up early on Tuesday for the real scramble, with our packs on by 6:30a. Over eons, giant cubes of granite have fallen into the creek repeatedly, piling up until the creek either goes over or under the rocks. With the near-vertical granite walls, little grows there, mostly just an occasional aspen or willows closer to the creek.

The creek made a sharp bend south, and after plowing through willows, we spotted several scattered cairns atop car-sized boulders, indicating we needed to cross the now-invisible stream. Ringtail took one route and I took the other, but not before I put my camera away . Leaping from one boulder to another I tried not to fall in the openings between the rocks. I could hear but not see the creek flowing far below. Jumping to the next boulder, I scraped the side of a rock and my water bottle flew out of my mesh pocket, bounced on the granite and fell into the abyss. I took off my pack and peered down and could see it hung up on some logs. I crawled down into the hole and retrieved it. I climbed out, triumphantly holding it up for Ringtail to see. But in my joy at not littering, I failed to notice I was missing something else.


Ringtail silhouetted in Lost Creek.

We finally rejoined each other on the other side and continued the boulder-hop down. Finally we could make out a faint trail heading up – straight up. Eventually I was up ahead of Ringtail and heard him call out that his carbon-fiber poles, secured to the side of his pack, were missing; they’d been pulled out by the aspen saplings we were climbing between. So we headed back down and found them fortunately laying trailside. Above the disappearing creek and the boulders, I took a shot of where we had just come from, oblivious to the fact that back there in those boulders was my tent.


Image of from where we'd just come.

We came down to the creek and met up with the McCurdy Park trail, and it was taking off my pack for a break that I finally realized I was missing my reliable, old Peak 1 tent. Ringtail left it up to me whether we head back in search of it or continue on. I knew that I must have lost it in those boulders over the creek; it surely ripped off the carbiner hooked to it by the string of a its stuff sack. I’d pulled it off as I scraped the boulder and it had fallen down in the hole. To go back there and look for it would be in vain. I sacrificed it (and regretfully littered, too.) Someday, I hope a spelunker crawling down in the boulders looking for the lost creek will score it.

A little later Ringtail spotted us a herd of bighorn sheep on the opposite cliff,eeking out an existence in the canyon. We headed down the McCurdy Park trail alongside Lost Creek and came upon its most spectacular disappearing act under a multi-storied wall of granite blocking the creek. We switchbacked up the north side around the wall, then dropped down to where the creek emerged – flowed up – behind it. An incredible sight.


Granite wall forcing Lost Creek to disappear.

From there we did an up and down and up again over Refrigerator Gulch, then north and up a ridge on the Goose Creek trail. Now in the Goose Creek drainage, we were just two streams over from Lost Creek, yet what a difference! It was covered in rich soil filled with giant firs.


Wild iris in the lush Wigwam Creek drainage.

We camped near where Goose Creek and Wigwam creeks met. Ringtail set up his Blackbird and I cowboy-camped on the ground, fighting off bouts of hammock-envy.


"Hey buddy, what happened to your tent?"

The final day’s hike was a gentle hike up Wigwam Creek, over a ridge and down East Lost Park to end the loop and hike back up to the car, about 11 miles that we had finished by 1p.

The entire hike is shown in a short video posted in my comment three entries below, or view it HERE.

I had promised Ringtail a cheap, post-hike Guinness in Pine Junction on the way out. We were too early for Happy Hour on the first round, but had a couple $2 happy-hour ones with our giant “VW Bus” burgers, and then realized after paying the bill that they hadn’t charged us for the first pair, making them all one-dollar Guinnesses, which made us both very happy. (Perhaps they gave us the first ones because of our smell?)

It was a great trip. Back at the car, I lifted Ringtail’s pack and realized it might have been half the weight of mine. My excuse was fear of cold, but it’s a poor one. I realized I really need to concentrate on lightness and not just giving it reverential lip service.

Hiking with Ringtail showed me a gorgeous hidden part of one of the closest Wilderness Areas to Denver. And like the Karate Kid, I learned from 40-plus years of experience, in this case light backpacking in Rocky Mountain Wilderness so close to home.