PIC HEAVY - Subalpine CO meadows, 11 mile two-day, and a near miss of DanaMac

**DanaMac** · 06-28-2010, 21:51

Pretty cool thing here - I just miss MustardMan, and an employee of mine in my other business went to the exact same place on Sunday, camped, and hiked out today on Monday, as he had the day off. Weird mojo going on here.

**squatty** · 06-28-2010, 22:44

Man that's some beautiful country! Looks like one heck of a trip!

Your picture below doesn't look like any deer or elk rubs I've ever seen. I don't think either of those are the culprit here.

Originally Posted by Mustardman

Beyond the birds, we didn't see much wildlife, but we saw plenty of signs of them, including lots of deer droppings, and plenty of damaged trees. I'm not sure if this one was a bear, deer, or elk, but there were a lot of trees with this kind of damage around the trails.

**Cannibal** · 06-29-2010, 09:51

Nice report! I hiked that area last year late in the summer and didn't get to see the wildflowers that you have pictured here. Might need to make some quick plans for the next couple of weeks. Thanks for the pics!

**DanaMac** · 06-29-2010, 15:03

Next time I'm going to make it a 2 nighter and bring my fly rod. Nice relaxing area to fish.

**Mustardman** · 06-29-2010, 15:06

The more of these hikes I do, the more I wish I knew how to fly fish. I grew up catching trout with corn, worms, and powerbait, and graduated to bass fishing from a jon boat. Somehow I doubt that background has prepared me very well for catching trout from tiny beaver ponds, but some fresh fish grilled over a campfire sure sounds like a good evening in the mountains to me.

**Mustardman** · 07-07-2010, 11:52

Bump because I want to hear more about Jeff's trip to this same location over the weekend.

How's about a trip report, Jeff?

**Mustardman** · 07-07-2010, 11:56

Originally Posted by cooldays

Mustardman...i thought you only posted photos of knives?

How did I miss this comment???

Well, since you insisted, here's the knife I carried for this trip, next to the fire. I pretty much always snap at least one knife pic on every trip I go on. It's a sickness

**Just Jeff** · 07-08-2010, 00:17

I just sorted the pics today from this trip and my Smokies trip. My camera has gone downhill recently so many of my Smokies ones didn't turn out as well as I'd like, but Jennifer's camera (her Xmas present this year) got some pretty good ones of the Rich Creek Trail.

We only hiked in a few miles on Saturday, and not much farther on Sunday morning until we found an AWESOME campsite that we just had to stop at. Joker caught a trout in a little stream that was only 6-8" deep right there at the site. And it had a great fire pit that someone put quite a bit of work into, so we had a nice fire that night. Walked down to the beaver ponds to do some fishing...which means we got to watch the trout suck in our bait and spit out our hooks. But it was still fun. Got lots of pics of wildflowers but didn't see any wildlife except a few squirrels. And heard something growling at me in the dark, as I posted in the Bear Attack thread.

I'll have some pics up sometime relatively soon. Haven't had a lot of time to devote to the website since I got back from vacation!

**Mustardman** · 07-28-2010, 09:00

I just got a PM asking about this trip, so I decided to update this post with a link to Jeff's topo for the area:

http://www.hammockforums.net/forum/a...3&d=1278906024

There are a number of other trails in the area that you could use to make a longer loop. If you want to grab a National Geographic map, it's Trails Illustrated #110 - Leadville/Fairplay. The map has an acceptable level of detail for the trails in the area.