August 23-25, 2008, Saturday - Monday Comanche Lake 9956’, 13T 442276mE, 4492436mN 4 - 5 Miles, 587’ Comanche Peak Wilderness Roosevelt National Forest, Larimer County, Colorado

Todd & Idelle pulled up in front of the house exactly on time at 8:00 am. Most of the gear was packed, but we had to finish getting it in the truck, and we had to transfer Idelle’s and Todd’s gear to the truck. We probably left the house at about 8:30 on Saturday morning. On the way up I-25 we stopped at Sportsman’s Comanche Lake, Comanche Peak Wilderness Warehouse to take advantage of a $10 off coupon and bought some ammo for the pistol. I bought some flies for fishing too, the real reason for the stop. Todd picked up some flies too. Somehow I lost all my flies, either last year, my suspicion, or during the big move. We drove up I-25 to US-34, then west through Loveland. A couple of miles west of Loveland County Road 27 (CR-27) breaks off to the north, veering left at Masonville. We encountered a bicycle event as we tooled up CR-27. Past Masonville we drove through about 20 miles of very scenic private land in the Buckhorn Creek valley. I had never realized such a large area of pretty nice montane private land existed there. There were all ranges of houses, from small dumpy places to relatively extravagant estates. A lot of places were for sale. We came to where Stove Prairie Creeks joins Buckhorn Creek at CR-44H. Stove Prairie flows from the north. We turned west toward the mountains and followed Buckhorn Creek over Bulwark Ridge and Penncock Pass, at 9143’, about 3000 feet above the confluence of Buckhorn Creek and Stove Prairie Creek. The pass was only 10 miles from the trailhead. But we weren’t sure and after the 16 miles on gravel road before the pass, we were ready to get there. A couple of miles off the pass we saw CR-63E peel off to the north, and to The Cache la Poudre River. We turned left and drove a few more miles, past Pingree Park to the trailhead. It was a few miles away from Comanche Reservoir, which is where I thought the trail would start. Just past the trailhead is a big Lutheran camp. CR-44H goes through it so we decided to continue on and see if we could get closer. We did; about a mile closer. Just past the camp. But that was it. The road was closed past a small, unimproved parking area at the trailhead. We would still be hiking more than the three miles I had planned. I’d guess there were six vehicles parked in the parking area. We got our stuff ready and took to the trail. We were hiking at 11:15 am. The road was closed about a mile or more from where I had hoped it would stop. That meant another two miles of hiking. So the easy three mile hike would probably be more like five miles. Two guys, probably my age, with fishing gear were hiking out. We talked a couple of minutes and learned that Browns Lake was quite the uphill hike. They offered no real fishing report, other than the news that Comanche Reservoir was low. We hiked through relatively dense forest of spruce, roughly parallel to Beaver Creek, past Hourglass Reservoir. We could see it through the trees but we were hundreds of yards to the north. At two miles we arrived at the dam at Comanche Reservoir. Both reservoirs were nearly empty, Comanche much more empty thanHourglass Reservoir. Both Hourglass and Comanche Reservoirs are part of Greeley’s water supply, used largely for irrigation, and with the dry year on the plains they had probably been draining at a good rate all summer. Now only a small pool formed where Beaver Creek flowed through the dam. We took a 20-minute break at the north edge of the dam. I took Titan down to the water to get a drink, but he was thinking we were walking all the way down there for some stickin’. He wasn’t interested in drinking any water, he was looking for a stick! We walked all the way back up. We ate some jerky and trail mix. Of course, we hydrated ourselves.

1 A man and his daughter walked up the dam and talked to us for awhile. They were on a backpacking trip too and had camped a few hundred yards downstream from the dam, between Beaver Creek and the trail. We had noticed their camp in the woods while hiking up from the truck. He had planned to go further, but decided to camp before Comanche Reservoir because it was his daughter’s first backpack trip so he was taking it easy. Both of them were toting their fishing gear, apparently to fish at the reservoir or on Beaver Creek. While we talked she found some entertainment in throwing sticks for Titan. We told them that we were planning to go to Browns Lake. He had never been there but knew of some restrictions for the area. It is a “Travel Zone” and in this particular Travel Zone open fires were not allowed. The map at the trailhead, which we looked at on the return hike, showed that the zone covered both Browns Lake and Timberline Lake, to a boundary just past Browns Lake. The topo map revealed that the terrain just past the lake, which is the rocky cirque that forms the lake, offers at best strenuous climbing, but certainly no camping. Browns Lake pools at about 10540’. Immediately downstream from the lake are a lot of forested areas that looked like they would hold good campsites. Timberline Lake, a fifth the size of Browns Lake, forms just after the outlet its bigger neighbor. But the man at the dam offering information said that the area had designated campsites, and only four of them … and no campfires. We didn’t like that news. We were considering Comanche Lake too. It’s about the same distance from the Comanche Reservoir dam, 3 miles, but about 520’ lower in elevation. The hike to Comanche would be easier because the elevation gained hiking to Browns Lake was achieved only by some steep hiking as soon as you left the Beaver Creek Trail. But the Travel Zone, and its restrictions, extended around Comanche Lake too, and no fires were allowed. According to the guy’s National Geographic Topo map there were only two or three campsites at Comanche Lake. It was two miles to the fork in the trail where we would have to make our decision. One mile from the dam was the boundary of Comanche Peak Wilderness. The pack to the fork in the trail was relatively easy, except where the trails paralleled Comanche Reservoir. It rose up steeply over a hundred feet on a sparsely wooded rocky slope and then dropped back down at the west end of the reservoir. Not far past the end of the empty reservoir confines stood the wilderness boundary sign. The Comanche Peak Wilderness is a serpentine shaped area set aside as wilderness in 1980. It is relatively small, at about 66,500 acres and is one of six wilderness areas bordering Rocky Mountain National Park. Four of the wilderness areas border the Cache la Poudre River valley, north of the park. The Comanche Peak and Neota Wilderness areas hug the north border of the Park, separated by Forest Road 156 (FR-156), which leaves CO- 14 at the Poudre River and follows Trap Creek through Box Canyon and then follows a portion of Corral Creek. FR-156 finally ends at the Park at La Poudre Pass, a few miles past Long Draw Reservoir. The west half of Comanche Peak Wilderness lies on the west slope of the Mummy Range, all north of the Park. The east half hugs the north border of the Park on the east slopes of the Mummy Range and winds around the east side of the Park almost to Estes Park. There are only a handful of lakes in the east half, and even less in the west half. Beaver Creek splits the east half of the wilderness. Our route would take us to either one of two. Comanche Lake lies to the south of Creek near Comanche Lake,

2 Beaver Creek and Browns Lake is to the north. Beaver Creek trail follows Beaver Creek to the ridges of the Mummy Range. We met two volunteers from the State Forest Service just before packing into the Comanche Peak Wilderness boundary. They had been to Comanche Lake and were walking out. The pair, ostensibly husband and wife, talked to us for about ten minutes, offering up more information on the Travel Zone rules, and about the lake itself. She mentioned that dogs are supposed to be on a leash. And I told her that I usually leash Titan only when people, dogs or horses are around and let him loose if everything seems calm. They told us about fire restrictions, both of the Travel Zone variety and of the Larimer County Variety. I commented about how vague and contradictory these fire restriction rules seem to be, and they agreed, but commented about the Forest Service’s propensity to offer tickets to those who opted to have open fires in the Travel Zones. They also commented, conversely, how they are often lax about the rules, giving warnings and making suggestions to douse fires. Their understanding was that the Travel Zone extended at least up to the ridges a few miles beyond Comanche Lake. The sign at the trailhead, which I checked out after we had returned two days later, showed the Travel Zone to extend less than a quarter mile past Comanche Lake, similar to the zone at Browns Lake. Just behind the wilderness boundary sign along the trail was the dreaded ‘No Campfires Beyond This Point” sign. Once again, exceptionally smoky rules regarding fires. We also learned from the couple that only two folks were around the lake, and a lot of fish rising in the lake. That just about made the decision for Todd as to which lake to hike to. I had pretty much made up my mind to try Comanche Lake, mainly because of the easier hike. I had planned to try Browns Lake because it had two lakes (actually a third lake forms a small pool just above Browns Lake), but the extra two miles of hiking had changed my mind. Of course, we still had a mile to pack before the trail forked, offering plenty of time to change our minds. From the point where the trail forks it is about a mile to both Browns Lake and Comanche Lake, although Browns Lake is a bit further. As we talked to the volunteers an old blue topless jeep (real old; maybe 50s vintage) crawled along the dry sand in the reservoir, the water almost nowhere in sight, then onto the trail and up to the crest of a little hill at the end of the reservoir. The trail had been a fire road in the days before the dam. We bid farewell to the volunteers and resumed packing on the Beaver Creek Trail past the reservoir. An older guy, sporting a white beard and white hair, turned his old blue jeep around at the crest of the hill about thirty feet from the trail and waited for us to pass on the trail. He had a dog in the jeep with him and they eyeballed us as we packed past them. The volunteers had said he probably was a resident of the valley just below the reservoir. Maybe he was out for his early afternoon “walk”. After we passed by, he started back down the valley. We took another small break at the fork in the trail. We agreed to camp at Comanche Lake and continued on the trail to the left. Almost immediately we crossed Beaver Creek on a two log bridge foot bridge. Then we started up a fairly steep hill toward Comanche Lake. After a while we began to wonder if the Browns Lake choice would have been any worse. We had a bit of rain on the hike from the reservoir to the lake. We all had on rain jackets for while, but as we neared the lake we had all shed that gear. Idelle was in the front of the pack when she first saw the Lake, announcing “we made it!” We chose the left side of the lake and located our campsite at about 3:30 pm. It is always a good feeling to see the destination when backpacking. A destination of a lake always has a definite finality to a pack trip. But sometimes finding a campsite is a tough physical chore at the “end” of the hike. Not so this time. The walk from the point where we saw the lake to the campsite was short and easy. No less satisfying, however, than if it had been a difficult search. It is always a real relief to shed the pack. I shed my pack and broke out a bottle of Asti. It was a bit warm, but the bubbly wine was the appropriate celebratory refreshment for the end of the hike. The designated campground was quite roomy with obvious places to set tents. Spruce trees shaded the whole site, but were far enough apart to offer more than a few places to pitch tents. The campfire ring had

3 been scattered, but the black dirt made it easy to see that it had been used recently. As soon as we had set up camp Todd went fishing. I sat on a log overlooking the lake and set up my fly rod. My gear probably hadn’t been used for a year, maybe two. As I was setting it up I cached a small #20 fly between my lips. As I tied on leaders and tippets I unconsciously spit it out, thinking it was a small twig or something. I immediately knew what had happened and scoured the ground to find and retrieve it. But it was gone. With my older low powered reading glasses not giving me adequate focus, I couldn’t find it. It was taking me a long time to tie on a fly. After struggling for awhile I realized that the flies I bought had knot cement clogging the eyelets. Since we were about ready to prepare dinner I decided to wait until we got back to camp, grab a sewing needle, and clean the heads on all of the files, or clean the flies in the morning. Todd fished with lures for awhile and I checked out the lake and its surrounding forests. The lake is surrounded forest, not real dense, but probably a bit more dense than the average Colorado mountain forest. A ridge rising almost due west of the lake, perpendicular to the Mummy Range ridges, separates the lake from the Beaver Creek Valley. The forest covered the ridge uniformly. The higher peaks and ridges beyond to the west were barely visible from my vantage point on the southeast shore of Comanche Lake. Fish were rising all over the lake. The lake seemed shallow from what I could see, but that did not seem to affect the fish. A number of logs had floated to that end of the lake and a lot of fish were rising in the water around them. Todd was casting the lure in the area with no luck, but he did exclaim how many decent size fish were just hanging out by the logs. Across the lake, toward what would be the inlet, was another camp. A couple of guys were fishing in that area. I could see smoke from their campfire ! After awhile another two guys appeared at the shore on the opposite side of the lake from me. I heard one of them comment about the campfire. Comanche Lake is not big, maybe 6 acres, and has no creek feeding it. But the lake was full, apparently, getting its water from seepage and underground water sources. The water was clear and clean. A constant breeze prevented it from giving us a glassy surface.

Our campsite lay south east of the outlet of the lake, almost halfway between the lakeshore and a creek that flows from the ridges to down to Beaver Creek. The creek misses Comanche Lake completely. We used the creek to supply our drinking water. The small creek had plenty of water flowing in it, but a person could walk across it in plenty of places. The water was definitely cold, but there was no lingering snow to be found. Idelle submerged our plastic egg case in the water and covered it with a rock. The forest was moderately dense but the floor was covered with a lot of foliage and moss. The area had probably been wet all year. It was very wet when we pulled into camp. Lots of downed trees littered the area. In fact, without detouring a fair distance, we had to climb over the downed logs to get to the creek, less than 200 feet away. In the shade on the southwest side of the lake we all noticed some pink fungus growing on a downed tree lying across the path around the lake. It almost looked like salmon eggs. We had hamburgers and fixin’s and mashed potatoes for dinner on Saturday. We were cleaning up afterwards as it got dark. We didn’t stay up too late, probably because we had no fire. I agreed with Todd to have one the next night. As always, the sleeping bag felt good after the hike.

4 I was up with Titan around 8 am on Sunday morning. It was cool but not at all cold. I started the stove and water for coffee and fed Titan. It wasn’t long before I was sipping hot coffee in the woods at 10000 feet. Titan munched down on his food. Since his household had been expanded to a second dog, he concentrated on his food until it was safely tucked away in his tummy. In previous years he had always been fairly indifferent to the food. Everyone else was up before long and we ate a fine breakfast of fresh scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns. Tang was the morning juice. Todd was the first to throw a lure in the lake, at about noon. He worked his way around the east end of the lake and found some hungry fish across the lake from our camp. I joined him, Idelle and Onda awhile later with the fly rod, checking out the other designated campsite on the way. The two guys who had appeared the evening before were gone. Todd was betting that tossing a caddis onto the surface would yield some nice fish. I tied a caddis on the tippet and exchanged spots with Todd on the big rock that sloped into the water. He was right; in maybe ten casts I had landed three nice fish, one 16 to 18 inches long, and plump. But it was the smallest of the three fought most fiercely. We were surprised that it was not the biggest one of the three. I retreated from the rock and let Todd use the fly rod. After fishing off the rock for awhile we made our way around the lake. We stopped to say hi to one of the two guys camped at the southwest end of the lake. He had a dog with him, but his two-legged companion was no where to be seen. They had set their camp on a big flat rock at the water’s edge. Another big rock leaned against it and formed a pretty nice shelter. Their sleeping bags were situated under the rock overhang and they had no tent. He wasn’t a real talkative guy, though, and we moved on. The fishing activity dropped off to just about nothing as we made our way around the lake tossing lures and lighting flies. About two PM clouds rolled over and darkened the place up. We ate some sandwiches and as we finished them a light rain began to fall steadily. It rained until about four PM. I took a nap and did not get up until about five. Onda and Idelle were playing cards under the kitchen tarp when I got up. I took a walk up the creek a ways. Todd hiked up the creek too, but separately from me. I could not find the path that the topo map showed going up to the ridge, west of the lake. Maybe it followed the lake and then peeled off toward the creek, but not near the creek. I thought I would take another walk in the morning and see if I could find the path. On either side of the creek the woods were moist and green. A lot of downed timber made walking in a straight line an impossibility; always turning to walk around the big logs, or climbing over them. Fungus on downed timber at Comanche Lake Titan ambled along with me. On the return trip I peeled off north to the lake. I never did find the trail. The topographic map showed the trail following the creek to its source, and then continued up to about 11200’ where it joined the Mirror Lake Trail. But that was in days gone by. That trail had probably not been used in close to 40 years and had disappeared from the terrain. Upon the post trip review of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forest map, dated 1997, it was revealed that the trail stopped

5 at Comanche Lake. The Roosevelt National Forest map circa 1974 showed the same thing. The wilderness area was not shown on that older map either, probably because the wilderness area had not been set up yet. When I got back Todd was still out walking. He had taken a walkie-talkie so I raised him over the air. He was close to camp trying to find the spot on the creek where we had stashed the eggs the previous night. He found it and then walked back into camp. We decided to eat dinner before it got dark, which would be fairly soon. That evening we had two types of soup, a potato soup and a tomato-vegetable soup. Both were good, but the tomato soup had a bit too strong a taste of puree. We also cooked up some potato cups to eat while the soups cooked. We had cookies for desert. Through the afternoon and while we were cooking Todd had rousted up some rocks and wood for a campfire. As it got dark we fired it up and Todd and I sat around it for a couple of hours. The ladies went to bed early, right at dusk, just about when Todd started the fire. The skies were clear and full of stars, but the tall trees limited the amount of sky we could see to almost directly above us. Todd spotted a couple of shooting stars. We burned pretty much all of the wood he had collected. Todd stayed up to babysit the fire and later doused it when he went to bed. Titan and I were up around seven am on Monday. I fed him and started water for coffee. Onda was up shortly after that but was feeling a bit sick so she lay back down in her sleeping bag. I finished my coffee and embarked on a walk to timberline with Titan. We walked on the trail around the southeast side of the lake, looking for the now non-existent trail that heads up to the ridges. We did not found it. We walked uphill parallel to the creek, again over downed timber and through moist ground cover, especially moist after the previous afternoon’s rain. We crossed the creek a couple of times to see if we could find the path. We never did. As we got closer to timberline the terrain became steeper, but overall it was a relatively easy walking. The woods were still dense on the north east side of the creek, but on the south west side the trees had been replaced by rock and scree. I came upon a couple of big snowfields on the southwest slopes. Just before I got to the snowfields a valley joins the main creek, supplying maybe a third of the water of the

Comanche Lake Valley, from the southwest, at 10400’ main creek. The snowfields provided most of the water in the creek above the valley. A smaller amount of water flowed down from the higher ridges. I spied a good place to take pictures about a third of the way up the south east slope. We made it up to about 10800’. After taking in the views and snapping a few pictures we descended down to the creek again. I had some cold clear water directly from the creek. Titan did his best to walk in it where I was drinking. We sat down to take a break and I realized I left my hat up on the slope. I debated going back to get it. I did. So I still have my hat. We walked down the creek again, in a more direct route this time. I was looking for a nice pool to clean up in. I eventually found one. The water was so cold that I think the dirt probably froze to by my body and chipped off. I had to force myself to make a few attempts to keep from getting too numb! But I got cleaned up, and cleaned off my t-shirt too. We then finished the walk back to camp. I was looking for the place on

6 the creek where Idelle had stowed the eggs two nights previous. I walked right past it without noticing it. I broke out the Garmin GPS when I thought I was in the area and found that I was a hundred yards downstream. I peeled off to the northwest and found the trail up to the lake, and followed it a few hundred feet back to the lake. I could see Todd fishing on the rock on the west side of the lake. I couldn’t see the ladies. I went back to camp for breakfast. It was about 11 am. Onda, Idelle and Todd had broken down part of the camp. Sleeping bags were rolled up and the tents, while still set up, were empty and clean. I heated water and used two packs of oatmeal in a bowl. When I was done I cleaned up and went to the lake to see what the others were doing. Todd was still fishing on the other side of the lake. Idelle and Onda appeared on the path. They had been with Todd but had come back to see if I had returned from my morning hike. Onda was feeling better again. We decided it was a good time to pack up and start down the trail. They called Todd and then the three of us went to camp and began to get ready to pack out. Todd joined us shortly and we all busied ourselves taking camp down. By 1:15 we were packed and began hiking out of camp. Just as we started on the trail we encountered a bit of rain, but it lasted only a minute or two, and brought very little moisture. The trail is mostly downhill from Comanche Lake to Beaver Creek Trail. But once across Beaver Creek there are some ascents that had us breathing pretty hard. When we came on the big empty reservoir we hit another hill that once again had us breathing hard. Past the dam we walked down hill or level for some ways and then hit the last breathe-hard hills we would hike over that day. Except for along the reservoir the trail is bathed in shade from the evergreen trees. As we descended closer to the truck the wet undergrowth gave way to a lot more dirt. We arrived at the truck at 3:45 pm. Once again, the end of the hike brought a welcome relief to our bodies and minds. But removing the pack at the truck is not like removing the pack at the destination, in this case Comanche Lake. Titan likes the end of the hikes too. As soon as the tailgate on the truck was down he was in the bed looking for a place to lie down. I had to get him out again so that we could get his pack off and get the coolers and other gear under the topper situated so that we could get the packs in. We gave Titan some water and broke out the traditional beer. As we removed boots and stowed gear in the truck we sucked down a cool beer or two and then piled into the cab for the 26-mile drive back to pavement, where CR-44H hits CR-27 northwest of Masonville. We dropped Titan off at Elaine’s house at about 6 pm, making the drive about an hour and a half.

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