Land of the Lost

What, exactly, is the definition of lost?

Thursday morning John and I headed to East Vail and the Gore Creek campground. The campground is located at the trailhead for the Gore Creek trail. This trail heads west out of East Vail towards Summit County. Eventually the trail goes over Red/Buffalo pass and down the Willow Creek trail into Silverthorne. John and I have been planning on doing this hike from Silverthorne to Vail for years, but the logistics never worked out. Needless to say, Thursday morning we were pretty excited to be finally heading out on this adventure!

Everything went fairly smoothly Thursday morning. We got a little later start than planned (as usual), so I was a little concerned about getting a campsite. We had to take 2 cars since this is a one way hike, so John went ahead an found us a great site while I ran errands in Frisco. We did a short hike up the Gore Creek trail Thursday evening just to get our muscles moving and then went to bed very early so we would be well rested for our long hike the next day.

We started up the trail in Silverthorne around 9 Friday morning. The weather was great and the wildflowers were off the charts! I don't think I've ever seen so many wildflowers in one day. That's saying something considering I've lived in the high country of Colorado for 11 years now and have definitely seen my share of wildflowers. But Friday was the best ever! Indian paintbrush, monkshood, showy aster, columbine, and lots of others that I don't know the name of!

Everything seemed to be going great.

After a few hours of hiking, we were above tree line and headed towards the pass. Both John and I had topo maps of the area in our packs, and the trail seemed really straightforward, so neither one of us was too worried about taking a wrong turn.

Around 1 in the afternoon we summited the pass, head a little lunch at the top, and started heading down the trail. We were excited to be just 7 miles of downhill away from our camp and some cold beers! Not long after we got off the pass, John started to notice that something wasn't right. We should have been heading almost due west into Vail, but instead were heading southeast towards Frisco. After 2 miles we realized we were on the wrong trail. We had actually summited the wrong pass!

Instead of being on top of Red/Buffalo pass like we thought, we had summited Eccles pass and were on Meadow Creek trail heading towards Frisco instead

of being on the Gore Creek trail heading towards Vail. I know this sounds like a really stupid mistake to have made. And in a lot of ways it was. But at the point of the trail where it branched off one way to go to Eccles and the other to go to Red/Buffalo it really looked like only one trail.

To make a long story short, we decided to go back over Eccles, find the correct trail over Red/Buffalo and still head down into Vail. It was going to be dark by the time we reached camp, but we had head lamps and plenty of food, so we weren't too worried. I do have to say that it makes you pause for a moment when, after 9 miles of hiking, you realize that instead of being 5 downhill miles from camp you are really 10 miles and 2 mountain passes away! It took a little convincing on John's part to get me to commit to this. I thought it would be better to just continue down Meadow Creek and go back to the car. Ultimately though I just put one foot in front of the other and headed back up Eccles.

Once over Eccles pass for the second time we saw where we thought our wrong turn had been made. Ironically it was near a spot we had stopped for a few minutes while I filtered more water! The trail up to Red/Buffalo pass is

apparently not very well used. There really was almost no trail to be seen, but we could see a bit of trail higher up, almost at the top of the pass. We headed in what we thought was the correct direction, but the trail started to head downhill not up. We still hadn't found the right trail!

At this point we decided to call it a day. Our much anticipated hike to Vail would have to wait for another day. We turned around and headed back the way we came. It was a sad moment when we realized we weren't going to accomplish the goal we had set for ourselves. But at least we had a beautiful day in the mountains with incredible wildflowers and good company. Kodi wasn't complaining! Over 9 hours and 15.31 miles later we were back at the car and driving over Vail pass back to our camp.

So what is the definition of lost? John and I always knew the way back to the car, even if we didn't know exactly where we were. And we didn't really mind being off course, except for the effort it took to get back on course. So I guess the term lost is relative to one's desire to know where you are. We knew we were playing in the mountains, which is our favorite thing to do. After that, what's a little lost among friends?