(August 29-30)
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This trip report is also a birthday greeting for Roger Molzahn, who turned 70 on my first day out. Welcome to your eighth decade, Rog!
I was on the trail by 8am, and it was easy going up to the fork. The east fork is the popular (very!) way to Booth Lake. The west fork has no trail (at least that I could find). So I climbed high (too high, it turned out) and contoured along a steep face at about 11,400', then popped over the pass and down to camp (11,000'). The next day it was rough going in the woods with no trail for about 4 hours, when I picked up the trail down to Piney Lake.  1a. Booth Creek trailhead   3.  4. red rocks  6. Looking down to the I-70 corridor  5. the falls   10. Lip of the falls  13.  14.  16. Parry gentian (thank you, Pat Taylor!)  19.  21. the steep gully I ascended  22. looking back down the gully  24. contouring around towards the pass  25. first view of the pass. I had to downclimb about 250'  26.  27.  28. monkey flowers  29. sedimentary rocks on the pass  30. first peek over the pass at the backbone of the high Gores  32.  33. Almost 8 hours to the pass (11,683 ft), 3 to the fork, and 5 bushwhacking  35. Looking back down as storm clouds gather  36. headed down - camp at those first trees  37. new kind of salsify  40. paintbrush  41.  42.  43.  45. 5pm, tent up, just as the rain began, which lasted off-and-on for about 4 hours  46.  47. heading out the next morning  48. Amanita muscaria  49. typical - cliffs and downed timber...   51. game trail or human trail?  55. unnamed lake  58. bridge  59. many lovely meadows as I made my way down  60. more amanita  61. surprise! A cluster of chanterelles  63. they all were growing within this frame  64.  65. back home, cleaned up  66. Looking upstream at The Spider, the peak that divides Piney Valley (my route to its right)  68.  70. old horse campsite  71. Horse Collar Camp - Est 1922  72. a little bit of color beginning to appear in the aspen  75. meanders of Piney Creek  77. Looking back to Peak C and Kneeknocker Pass (low point), which goes over to Black Creek  78. the commercial side of Piney Lake. Weddings run $50,000 and up  79. sheep grazing. Taken from the car of a friendly family from New Jersey who drove me back to Vail  |