The Hill Route

DV8 riding one of the old trestles up on Rollins Pass a few summers ago.

The historic Moffat Road: http://www.phantomranch.net/images/ghost/moffatrdmap.gif A tunnel now replaces this old train "Hill Route," but the road is still open to use. The 4wd road travels up 3800ft on either side of the Divide from East Portal to Winter Park. The tunnel is just over 6 miles long and takes about 15 minutes to get through on the train. On skis in the winter the road takes a bit longer. Training for the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse (GT) can make you do some cool things. Things you've wanted to do for a long, long time - such as take the train to Winter Park with your skis and ski home over the Continental Divide. The Redneck and I did just that Saturday. (This will be a long story, so get ready...)

The forecast was for a clear day of 27 degrees and breezy at East Portal. We were taking the "Hill Road" though so we prepared for it to be a bit breezier and cooler. Packs had everything from food and water to the huge Das Parka and pants, emergency blanket, shovel/beacon/probe, Spot Tracker, GPS, extra baselayer, mini-medical kit, etc. We had mostly what we'll have in our packs for the GT.

Redneck at the Amtrak ticketing booth.

Reserve online, scan and print tickets in a matter of seconds at the Station. Better, MUCH better than air travel. Especially since you can carry on everything from sharp edged ski to a leatherman to a whisky flask or whatever! The route we chose was the most straightforward and safe route we knew. Follow up the Corona Pass/Rollins Pass road over the pass and jump over to the gas pipeline trail that leads into the back of the Eldora Ski Area. Then head down the ski runs for some sweet full-moon night turns at the end of the day. On Topo, it's about twenty miles, the longer uphill section from Winter Park to the top of the pass is about 14 miles. There aren't many safe - as far as avalanche danger - passages over the divide. The west side is severely wind scoured so it's pretty safe from avalanches, but most of the east side of the divide is composed of much steeper cliff bands with only a few spots that roll over into gentle terrain. Rollins Pass, in my mind, is the only safe winter passage. Rodgers, Pawnee, and Arapahoe all have much steeper terrain that make them much more dangerous in winter. Because it's an old railroad route, Rollins Pass is nearly flat on both sides and usually easy to navigate.

All i need is my skis, and my thermos....and a pack full of everything one needs to survive a night out at 12,000ft. Walking thru Union Station in Denver to the train.

The train heads up to the grassland/forest boundary south of Boulder.

The train flows up the Tolland valley towards East Portal

The train arrives in Fraser. Redneck's girl left her Subaru at the station for us to shuttle to the trailhead. (Thanks for the cookies and car shuttle AP!)

The train left Denver at 8am, got to Fraser around 10:30 - a half hour past schedule due to a few freight trains slowing us down. We stopped at the Roasters for another coffee and some grub, and finally headed to the trail head. We were on the trail leaving the car at 11:15am. Not the earliest of starts, but it was the earliest Amtrak we could've taken, and we wanted to do the second leg - the leg we were most familiar with - in the dark. After all, the Grand Traverse starts at midnight.

Here's the Redneck heading up the groomed road. As you can see, I'm not joking - the road was groomed with a cat. That's because it's a popular snowmobile tour destination. So we had many 'bilers waving as they passed, offering to tow us up the rest of the way. Thanks, but I'm not getting on that thing with you! Because it was groomed, it was a pretty mellow approach to treeline. The grade was never over 4% and it was freaking corduroy for much of the way. We could've skated the first 10 miles. As soon as we got off the trail, there was about 3-4" of new snow atop unconsolidated early winter snow - difficult trail breaking to say the least. It would've taken us twice as long if we had to break trail. Our ski setup: Asnes Holemkollen XC skis (3/4 edge, non fish-scaled) with Rottefella NNN BC bindings, Rossingnol X3 BC Boots...in short, a superlightweight touring setup. My boots don't like my feet so I had to stop 2 times to set up some moleskin to prevent blisters. I've worn these boots nearly daily for a month, at the nordic center and at work hoping to break them in with no luck. I think they're just not meant for my feet.

Wait...what side of the divide are we on? Corona Bowl this way? Huh?

Riflesight Notch. A remnant old trestle bridge around mile 10.

The first 12 miles were cake, other than my feet getting bruised and blistered by my boots. We got some good kick and glide on the skis. It was a blue kick wax day, and the snow was perfect...we hit it just right. We averaged 3 miles per hour for the first 12 miles so made it to treeline - and where the snowmobile tours ended - by 3pm. And then it began. The tour. A jouney similar in nature to the Niwot Traverse I wrote about a couple of weeks back. The type of beat down that only this type of trip provides. Winds spitting needle-like snow pellets at us from the west on our northwest traverse up to the pass. The last 2 miles up and over the pass, above the old hotel site to the parking area, then up to the high road to avoid the railroad trestles, took us nearly 2 hours. One third the pace of the previous four hours. The road bed was nearly un-noticeable in the white-out conditions. We alternated trading pulls at the front to break trail on the knee deep wind-drifted snow and alternating rock-hard sastrugi.

This is quintessential above-treeline Colorado in January - and on a day they said wasn't going to be snowing, or windy. Imagine it in a blizzard. I can't imagine it'd be much different except with higher winds and even less visibility. The thermometer said 18 and the winds were easily gusting to over 40mph. The only way we knew which way to go was from the Redneck's memory of the trail, and my failing GPS unit telling us where the road was in relation to our location. And it wasn't even dark yet. I just am thankful we got up and over the pass before nightfall.

This is the crest of the Pass, and the last picture I took of the tour.

We had passed the "actual" pass at this point but had to still climb up and away from the trestles. This is the Rollins Pass high road...with the Trestles below to the left. This is the only "blue sky" we saw today...and it was getting dark. This shot was taken at 4:30pm...we were just getting to the top of the pass and had another 7 or so miles to go. I had a feeling of elation at the top of the pass, but also a bit of nervousness for what was to come. We "knew" the second section of trail in the summertime, but it was the dead of winter and we were at least an hour behind schedule. The top of the pass was unskiable. Exposed rock and soil, winds so brutal they knocked us sideways each step of the way. It was now dusk as we dropped into the drainage that led into Yankee Doodle Lake and then Jenny Creek but was too steep and breakable to safely attempt on skinny skis. We took out our headlamps as we took a short break at the bottom of the drainage to put on our skis. We were finally out of the wind for the first time in over 2 hours. Not for long though. As we climbed up to the pipeline trail, the clouds were turning pink and red, the sun had set and it was going to get dark soon. This is one of those times where you get that chill down your spine, this time for a few different reasons. One being that you are outside in this amazingly beautiful place, actualizing an adventure you've wanted to do for years. The light of the sunset "clicked" that in for me. The other reason being something that I thought the next second: "Holy shit, it's getting dark, and we have 6 miles of trail to go." If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know I have the tendency to get lost....or occasionally a little turned around at least. This apparently gets magnified in the dark. I took the lead up the hill and followed what I thought was the pipeline trail, but up there in the dark, the ridge line leading more southeast looked very similar to how i remembered the pipeline trail to look. Snowdrifts covered any trail markings - the pipeline signs - so the Redneck didn't notice my error either until we came out in an open meadow that looked to be pretty far off the mark. The snow ended in grass and any pipeline trail was unrecognizable. We didn't need our headlamps yet as it was still somewhat light out - around 5:20pm at this time. I took out my GPS to see where we went off course. The batteries were dying so I had to load and unload the batteries a couple of times to make it turn on. It crashed a third time and I decided to put new batteries in. I heard the Redneck say, "I think we passed the turn, we took a right instead of a left back there somewhere..." and I replied with something like, "I'm going to change the batteries in my GPS to see where we are." My head was down, he was behind me, we could barely hear eachother as the wind was still howling. After I replaced my batteries and got a position I found we were a bit to the right of the trail. As I turned around, I said aloud, "we should head left to find the trail." He wasn't there.

I looked around in disbelief. Where'd he go? The wind had since covered any tracks we created on the way in. It was now almost "officially" dark at 5:30. I turned on my headlamp and blew my whistle as I walked increasing radius circles around the area expecting that he'd just gone behind a tree to take a leak. I couldn't find him, none of my yells or whistles brought back a response. What the fok!? However, these were the conditions where you could be 30 feet away and not hear a bomb go off. It gives me chills just writing about it. Needless to say, I got scared. We
were separated right as it got dark and we were lost. I had a Spot and the GPS, so I felt I could get home safely (eventually), and I was pretty certain we could both bivy out there safely and start back up in the morning when we could see the route better. But not knowing what happened to him was a very distressing feeling to say the least.

What does one do in this situation? Stand around and wait until they hopefully return? I wasn't sure where he went so I imagined he didn't know where I was. I was pretty sure he went to go find the trail but as it was dark, I didn't think he'd be able to find his way back to where I was. He must have expected that I followed him after we stopped in the meadow but with the wind and our hoods over our heads communication was challenging. I didn't feel staying put was an option. I was in a very exposed location with the wind and snow, i was getting cold just standing around. I looked at my revived GPS unit and saw that I was too far left. But then I thought I saw a light ahead in the distance, straight ahead, and not to the left. Didn't matter, I went that way, continuing on the ridgeline that we had came out on. Was that light him? Maybe he passed around and to the left of me and this was the hill on the trail that I remembered...? I didn't know, I just went towards the light.

After 15 minutes of traversing scoured wind drifted snow and krumholtz, I decided that I was not going to find the trail on this route and that I had seen a ghost - not really a ghost - but it was snowing pretty hard so I must have seen the reflection of a larger snowflake in my headlamp's path. I stopped behind a big drift to regroup. After checking my GPS, I decided to contour back and to the left - north west - in the hopes of finding the Hut...where we said we may stop in depending on timing and weather. It seemed a great time to make that our safety stop, i just hoped he was thinking the same thing. However, I had already made my usual mistake - I didn't
backtrack. I expected that he found the trail and decided to head to the hut after not finding me. I thought that i was BEHIND him. I realized through this experience that I commonly make the mistake of forging ahead into unknown terrain because I can't see why I should backtrack to find where I went wrong. (No, this isn't a significant existential realization, just the facts.) And in doing so, I get (got) more lost instead of finding the trail turnoff and my skiing partner. Maybe it's GPS-inspired confidence or just stupidity, I don't know. But I truly believe, I just know, that I can find my way out eventually. So that's what I did.

My GPS is loaded with all the waypoints I've compiled over the years and the Hut was on there. I set it to navigate to the hut and benched over in that direction. It took another 30 minutes first through the scoured krumholtz and then through the powder in dense trees, breaking trail in a much more significant amount of snow than I had expected, but I finally arrived at the hut. There was a group of snowshoers there already but before going in I tried calling from my cell phone to see if I got coverage. I had one bar, but there was no answer, it didn't even ring.

I knocked on the door of the hut and some warm and friendly faces welcomed me into the hut to sit by the fire. There were two couples that had snowshoe'd up for the night, and a cute golden retriever passed out next to the fire, tired from the big hike up. I first asked if my friend had been by the hut looking for me. They said no. I then relayed the story to them and my uncertainty of what to do. Two of them offered to go out with me and try and find him. I declined, saying that would only possibly get us lost and make the situation even worse. I knew i had to go back out with the GPS and find the trail and backtrack, hoping to run into him on the way to the hut. The turnoff to the hut is not obvious, especially in these conditions. I'd at least be able to go to the turnoff and wait. I fueled up and looked at the GPS of where I was headed. Just then, my cell phone let out the "Voicemail received" tone! What?! I checked and it was a voicemail from the Redneck! I was able to listen to it - it was sent 40 minutes previous at 5:36, about 15 minutes after us getting separated. The voicemail said something like, "Meriwether, where are you? I found the trail, it's back towards the pass aways!" I called back instantly, it rang, and rang...and he picked up! He was still back at the trail intersection trying to find me. He had gone back and forth from the meadow to the intersection looking for me and wasn't sure what to do either. I relayed that i was at the hut. "YOU'RE AT THE HUT?!" in almost an accusatory manner. "Yep, head down the trail and i'll meet you at the turnoff!" I had no idea how long it'd take for him to get to the turnoff, maybe a half hour? So I casually got ready to go and suited up. 15 minutes passed and there was a knock at the door. The whole hut erupted in joyus greetings. It was funny because at first I thought they were welcoming another one of their own party as they were so glad to see this hooded character! Then I slowly said his name....? Yep, it was him. I was kinda in disbelief at it all. We had reconnected and were safe in a warm hut. Life was again good.

After much talk about what happened, we realized that the trying conditions created very poor communication pathways and we'll have to work on that in the future. He didn't know that I was stopping to put new batteries in my GPS and that I didn't hear him say, "Let's head back and find the trail intersection" after us both realizing that we were off trail. It happens, but I never want it to happen again, especially in the dark. I was inches away from calling for help on the Spot tracker, and i would have had I gone back to the trail looking for him and not finding him
within a half hour. The cell phone signal saved us. Technology in the backcountry has its place, no doubt in my mind.

I then tried to call my wife to let her know we were safe at the hut but the phone suddenly said "No Service." Then I tried to send a text message with the same result. No dice. The phone signal only worked for me receiving his voicemail, and me calling him back, then it died. That was a bit odd. The Redneck and I warmed up by the fire, discussed exit strategies, took a couple of swigs out of the flask of whisky, and the suited up to go. We decided to head down the singletrack ski trail - the safer and easier to navigate option of the two. It's a bit longer because you can't ski down the ski hill, but there was no chance of getting lost again and it'd be out of the wind which we were very sick of by now. We said our thanks and goodbye's to the friendly hut-dwellers and walked out of the hut to return home. Once on the trail, I was able to try and try again to send a text message to my wife to let her know we're on our way to the parking lot and were about 45
minutes out from pickup. It FINALLY went through and all was finally coming together again. The trail down is a toboggan run in the day and at night with Petzl's it was even sketchier! But fun with the new 4" of snow to make psuedo-tele turns in the fray. A 20 minute downhill, then the 20 minute uphill out of the drainage took us to the top of the nordic center where we had our first real turns of the day down the baby-slopes of Eldora. Those turns topped a truly epic day - one like I've never had before. Scraping down frozen corduroy with skinny skis, headlamps and huge packs to the warmth of a big van with my girl waiting with pizza, beer and puppies...well that's as a good an ending if i've ever heard.

All said and done, it was 9 hours, on the nose. Approximately 1 hour at the hut, so 8 hours of moving on the "Hill Route" over the divide. Of course we didn't do the actual Hill Route on the east side to East Portal, and instead chose a more interesting, "shorter" option...that could have ended much worse. But it all ended perfectly and I'm almost glad we got separated as I learned a ton about night-time travel and team dynamics under stressful weather conditions. Lessons that will undoubtedly help us in the Grand Traverse.

But that's for the next post - lessons learned and the behind the scenes action that took place without our knowledge. Let's just say that I'm just really glad to know I have good friends willing to boot up and come look for me in the middle of the night.