September 19 - 20, 2009, Saturday-Sunday Cat Lake 10591’, north 39° 47’ 54”, west 106°20’ 12” 6.6 Miles, 1995’ Eagles Nest Wilderness Arapaho National Forest, Summit County, Colorado Phil was home on leave for nearly all of September so we decided to get a hike in. His long time friend Anthony decided to go with us. We picked a fairly close destination but were open, to some extent, to a longer hiking distance. We chose Cat Lake, in the Eagles Nest Wilderness. The drive is only two hours from home: I70 west to Silverthorne, north on CO-9 to Heeney Road, Heeney Road almost to Heeney, and then a couple miles in on FS-203 to the Surprise Lake Trailhead. Heeney Road is easy to miss and we did not get slowed down quick enough to make the turn so we had to turn around to get back to it. There was a wide shoulder there, probably made so people like us could turn around there when we drove by Heeney Road. We noticed there was a wide shoulder on the other side of Heeney Road too. It must be hard to see coming from the northwest too. Surprise Lake Trailhead is just past Cataract Campground. On the way home we drove through it and learned that it is not a well-developed campground. The trailhead ‘parking lot’ is nothing more than a wider spot on the gravel road with the typical USFS Trailhead signage ... and a fee tube. There was a $5 fee to park for up to five days. The smooth gravel road goes a bit past the trailhead to the Cataract Lake Trailhead. We didn’t go there but any car could go to the lake trailhead with no problem. Titan went along and was glad to be running loose after we parked. We left the house at 6:30 am and were hiking at 8:30 am. The weather was perfect for hiking – clear skies, almost no breeze and moderately warm We crossed over Cataract Creek on a nice footbridge as soon as we left the parking lot. For about a half a mile the trail ascended moderately through aspen just starting to take on their fall colors. Then pine trees took over. Pine beetle damage here was minimal and we enjoyed hiking in shade up the alternately very steep and moderate inclined trail. In 2.5 mile we arrived at the Gore Range Trail, at 9940’, about 1344’ higher than the footbridge. By the time we hit the junction the pine had gave way to spruce and fir. We were about half the distance to Cat Lake and well over half way up the 2144’ elevation we would gain before we descended into our camp. We had taken a break a hundred yards before the junction, so when we hit the junction we turned right and kept going. Surprise Lake was only a few minutes further up the Gore Range Trail, on the left. The trees were still dense, the skies were still clear. The weather report had predicted a nice day today, but turning cold and wet the next day. So far it was correct. It was perfect for hiking. The Gore Range Trail traverses the east slope of the Gore Range through the Eagles Nest Wilderness, from Dillon to a bit north of Heeney. It is said that the range is named after Sir St. George Gore, an Irishman who led a hunting expedition across these mountains in the mid-1800s. We hiked up the Gore Range Trail for only about 0.8 miles to the juncture of the Cataract Trail. Cataract Trail heads southwest, up hill about 2.7 miles, to Upper Cataract Lake, and then beyond to Mirror Lake on the Mirror Lake Trail. The trails are marked pretty well at every junction, probably a big help to the many hikers that use these trail in the summer. But we didn’t see a single hiker. We arrived at Cataract Lake about 11:30. We decided to drop our packs and search out the perfect campsite. The first thing we noticed was the “no fires at Cataract or Cat Lakes” sign. A new sign, to boot. So we decided to go up the trail toward Mirror Lake until we could find a decent campsite in the woods. Phil, Anthony and Titan took off in search thereof while I packed some stuff in the backpack. As I did a Forest Service ranger walked up. After our initial greetings, I asked her how far from the lakes we would have to be in order to have a campfire? She replied that “we ask that you be a quarter mile from the lakes”. We talked a minute while we walked toward the lake. Then she walked to the east of the lake and I walked on the trail to the north of the lake. I caught up with my companions at the 1 creek that flows from Upper Cataract to Cat Lake. We would hike about 15 minutes on the Mirror Lake Trail, and then circle into the forest west of Cat Lake. The forest floor had been covered with kinnikinick since well before Surprise Lake. We walked through it for 500 yards and found a good site for our camp, probably 200 yards from the lake and 100 yards from the creek. We would have to be careful when we got water from the creek or visited the lake because there were no real landmarks visible, the forest was dense, and finding our way back could be a challenge. The creek was without a name on the USGS topo map. But it would probably be the east fork of Cataract Creek. Even though the creek flowed out of Upper Cataract Lake down to Cataract Lake, it was not called Cataract Creek. Cataract creek drains Mirror Lake, to the west. Go figure. No worries though, the water was pretty clear and it was not too far from camp. After we set up camp we took Titan southeast to Cat Lake for some stickin’. Of course he was excited for that. We had to walk around to the south side of the lake to find some deep water. We saw a couple hikers coming down the trail on the far side of the lake. The same trail that we had come down earlier. We had kept on the upper, main trail, but it also drops a couple hundred feet to Cat Lake. Before long the couple appeared shore-side on the opposite side of the lake. We decided to walk up to Cataract Lake, just a couple hundred yards to the south. These couple hundred yard are a steep set of yards. We scrambled up and stopped at the trail and took some views to the north before walking up to the north shore of Cataract Lake. To the north was the Cataract Creek valley, packed with thick spruce and fir. In the distance we could see the Williams Fork Mountains on the north side of Green Mountain Reservoir. But the valley dropped down too steep to see the reservoir at the bottom of the valley. Thick forest surrounded Cataract Lake except at the south end, where boulders, rocks and scrabble defined the slope half way up to the rocky peaks. We could see the ragged peaks of the Gore Range. The wilderness’ namesake peak forms the ragged mountain to the south and west of the lake. Eagles Nest rises to 13397’. Mount Powell, named after John Wesley Powell, rises to 13580’ just south of the lake and south east of Eagles Nest. We could not see either from our vantage point. Three other peaks, all unnamed and all over 13000’, and all just above the south end of the lake, block the line of site to the two more famous peaks. The craggy ridge forms a cirque where Cliff Lake lies at 12146’. We sat at Cataract and talked about hiking up to Dora Lake, which lies in a relatively flat plateau at 12284’ between Cliff Lake and Dora Mountain. We could see two ways to get up there: one by way of the ridge to the north of the lake and the other by way of a very steep rocky slope at the south end of Cataract Lake. The later would be shorter but the climb North Slope of Upper Cataract Lake (10756’) would be a lot tougher. We would decide later. The weather was nice. There were some clouds and some light wind, but it was definitely nap weather and there was nothing we could do about it. We found some warm grass on the slopes at the north end of the lake and turned to the task that beckoned. About an hour later we retraced our route from camp to Cat Lake to Cataract Lake, more or less paralleling the creek to Cat Lake, and then walking around the south and west shores of the lake. We took off into the woods just past a marshy area, where a lot of red kinnikinick was preparing for winter. Phil led the way and we came out at camp with no turns. Without a sense of direction or a GPS it would be tough to find camp in these woods. We were camped next to no real landmark. But he walked right to it, without the GPS. 2 It was still pretty early so I heated some water for tea. While the water was heating up I broke out the .44 and targets.