“I’ve got stretch marks on my bladder” as Brad emerges from his tent. Surprisingly, he was last up and it was only 6:30a. Tom and Joan were already eating and wanted to hit the trail by 7 which they did. We were boiling our water as we watched Tom pull further and further away from Joan. We could monitor their movements all the way to the top. Within 20 minutes of leaving camp, Tom was at the top. Joan was another 10 minutes making it. We never saw them again.
We ate breakfast and stared at the pass. It really is impressive to see the trail winding back and forth up the side of the mountain but it gets intimidating when you see how small people look on it. By 9 we were ready to go. As I’ve said before, Pam is a slow but steady climber hence we put her in the lead. I was feeling a little better today so I just wanted to get this climb over with. After about 20 minutes of steady shuffling, we met an Indian guy and his dog coming down. We asked if we were getting close and he kind of ignored us. We asked again and he just smiled at us and said we’re making good progress. After a third time, he told us we were about half way. After he got out of earshot, I heard Brad “How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?”
As we got closer to the top, I passed Pam because I was ready to be done. I got up there about 5 minutes before her and dropped my pack. Looking back where we had just climbed, I got a feeling of vertigo and the other side wasn’t much better but it did have grass along the trail. The top couldn’t have been 15’ wide. When Pam got up, she also dropped her pack and we sat and waited for Brad. A few minutes later, Brad peeked over the top, but he wasn’t taking full steps. He was barely moving like Tim Conway as the old man on the Carol Burnett Show. He got up and sat down but he was definitely spooked by the height. Once he’d recovered a bit, we started to take pictures but he wouldn’t move his feet more than 6” at a time and he wouldn’t lift them, just slide them.
Once we started down the Snowmass Lake side, Brad slowly returned to normal the lower we got. I guess we were all running on a bit of an adrenaline rush because even though the hiking down was easy, we were crashing. After we’d gone down a mile or two, we ran into a 72 year old man that was solo hiking the loop. I started talking to him and found out that he was a Buddhist and had spent several months hiking in Nepal including the Annapurna Circuit which I had done about 6 years ago. I noticed Pam and Brad weren’t talking and Brad was shuffling from foot to foot (actually lifting them off the ground now). The old guy told us that the worst place, by far, on the entire loop was about a 30’ stretch right at the top of West Maroon Pass. I thought he was just being a little over critical. Finally Pam and Brad both said we need to get going.
We stopped for lunch in about another ½ mile by the only shade we had run across. As we were talking at lunch two things came up from Brad: 1) He said I told him to only bring one change of clothes because he noticed Pam and I had both changed shirts today. 2) He thought he was very slow compared to us getting ready in the morning, so he wanted to get up earlier to not be a hold up. In response: 1) I meant one additional change to what he was wearing. But his clothes were still pristine, not a speck of dirt on them. This is when it really sank in that Brad is a manager—let someone else get dirty. And 2) we’re not in any hurry so don’t worry your pretty little head over it. We had noticed that Brad takes a long time to get ready in the morning. I attributed it to his being somewhat prissy at times. I could also imagine him unpacking everything in his pack and arranging it to admire that he was actually carrying all of this stuff on his own back.
As we got closer to Snowmass Lake, we came across a huge boulder field. I came close to falling here. It was a relief to be all the way down to lake level, but we didn’t actually go to the lake. We wanted to push on and try to make it a good way up toward Buckskin Pass (or as Brad got me calling it, Foreskin Pass). We ran into several couples around the lake that told us they had passed some really nice campsites next to a beaver lodge, dam, and lake. It was early afternoon by the time we made it to the beaver dam so we sat on a fallen tree for a snack. One drawback to the maps of the loop is that no campsites are indicated except for around Crater Lake. We slowly talked ourselves out of climbing up to Foreskin Pass because we didn’t want to run the chance of camping in a dry site. We decided we would camp in the first nice site we found. As luck would have it, it was only another couple hundred yards until we saw a trail cutting to the left leading to a nice level site with seating and an established fire site—home for the night.
We set up camp and took a little better care with our bear bags tonight since we were at the lowest elevation we had camped at so far. We were around 10,200’ but in a forest and not just a few trees. There is bear activity around the loop, but mostly around Crater Lake because that’s just a short walk from the Aspen side parking area which tends to attract less experienced campers who can be a little sloppy. Nonetheless, after supper I climbed up the side of our little hollow and hung everything with a smell except for my little surprise for Brad—Jiffy Pop popcorn.
Bourbon shots by the campfire with popcorn. Brad had a couple of cigars tonight and accused me of being whipped when Pam is around. Truth of the matter is that I just don’t have the lung capacity developed yet to handle a cigar at this elevation.
Rather than lower the trash bag out of the tree, I took the Jiffy Pop tin outside of camp and covered it with rocks. We let the fire die down to a safe level and then went to bed. It was already getting pretty cold. In addition to our long underwear and stocking caps, Pam and I got our fleece jackets ready to put on in the night. There was no whimpering coming from Brad’s tent tonight.