Mike, Jim Proffer and I did a backpacking trip into
the Flat Tops Wilderness Area over Labor Day weekend,
September 4-7, 1998. This trip had a few
"interesting" episodes. One thing the trip
report below doesn't mention is that I was operating
on severe sleep deprevation due to Proffer's snoring
(I contemplated murder by the third night! :-) Mike was
in a tent 50 yards away, and the first night thought the
sound was a bear. When he figured out what it was, he
felt real sorry for me (but not sorry enough to trade
places! :-) The following is extracted from two trip
reports I wrote after our return. Photos follow.
We arrived in the Flat Tops area Fri. night
around 7:30PM. Since it had taken us longer to get
there than we had planned (compounded by Jim's
late flight arrival, Jim and I getting lost finding
Mike's place of work, and the fact that Highway
131 to Yampa had more curves and was slower than we
thought). So, since it was getting dark, we paid $3
and stayed in one of the Forest Service campgrounds
for the night near Stillwater Res.
Sat. morning we were on the trail at
Stillwater Res. by 8:30. We then climbed out of the
valley and up trail 1119, past Little Causeway Lake
to the eastern terminus of the Devil's Causeway
ridge, and then passed down the other side, ending up
setting up camp a 100 yards from the northern shore
of Causeway Lake. Estimated trail miles at around six
miles (evenly distributed on both sides of the pass)
and elevation change as 1,200' up and 1,200'
down. As with all the valleys in the Flat Tops area,
we were at 10,000+' (approx. 10,200' at the
lake), in a glacially flattened valley, surrounded on
three sides by basalt cliffs rising to
11,500-12,000' (the cliffs to the west of us were
part of the "Chinese Wall," a particularly
baroque formation). Predominant trees are Englemann
Spruce. There are a lot of deadfall
and dead standing trees in the Flat Tops, from a
spruce beetle infestation in the late 40s and early
50s. An amazing number of dead trees are still
standing after 50 years, interspersed with 40-50 year
old living spruce. Saturday night we heard coyotes
and elk bugling (it is bow hunting season there right
now, so we saw a few hunters over the
weekend).
Sun. morning we hiked back up to the pass, and
then ascended the steep hill leading to the ridge to
the west, and crossed the Devil's Causeway
(thereby allowing my friend Mike to overcome his fear
of drop-offs when presented on both sides at once -
something he hadn't told me about until we
confronted the Causeway, but that he then conquered -
it is great to be witness to someone overcoming a
fear). It was as advertised - the Causeway itself is
probably no longer than 1/4 mile, but the tricky
section is only about 75' long. There, it goes
down to 3-4' wide, with sheer drop-offs on both
sides. The drops on both sides appeared to me to be
about 200', followed by 600' of really steep
scree slopes. You wouldn't want to fall, it would
hurt. The views from here were amazing - you could
look into two valleys at once, and in fact, at the
thinnest points, could hold both drop-offs in your
peripheral vision.
We then walked out onto the Flat Top to the
west, and after about a mile and a half turned around
and came back, returning over the Causeway. The tops
of the Flat Tops are actually not quite flat, and
rise in places to peaks in the low 12,000' range.
The tops are pretty much entirely above timberline,
except for some scattered krummholtz in various
sheltered places. Estimated trail mileage on Sun. was
about six miles, with approx. an 1,800' elevation
gain from the valley floor. One other interesting
point - on the Flat Top east of us were (domestic)
sheep grazing at approximately 11,800', with a
shepherd with two horses, a dog, and a tent with
stove camped over there as well. It was strange
seeing a flock of sheep above timberline. According
to the guidebook and Forest Service handouts, grazing
is still permitted by permit in areas where it has
historically occurred.
When we got back to camp, we ate, and then
around 7:00PM JimP went into a stand of timber about
150-200 yards away we were using as our latrine area,
and when he came out, I went to do my business. When
I got back to camp, I realized the TP roll had fallen
out of my pocket, so I went back looking for it. Not
too far from where I thought I would have dropped it,
I looked over my shoulder into a thicket of spruce
trees, and saw a prone adult cougar looking back over
its shoulder staring at me. The estimated distance
between us (no exaggeration here, I am concentrating
on being as accurate as possible) was 20-25'. I
maintained enough presence of mind to not turn away
from it, to not maintain eye
contact, and to back away from it. When I got over a
ridge, the adrenaline took over and I have to admit I
ran back to camp, but I don't think it was
following me.
Needless to say, I was excited. I told Jim and
Mike about it, and then went to a neighboring
campsite to warn them not to go too far off in the
trees to do their business. The adrenaline slowly
left, with no traces other than the occasional
shiver. A funny footnote - the guidebook I have for
the Flat Tops has a section about animals and what to
do with encounters. The first sentence he says for
cougars is to feel lucky if you see one, because he
has been going there 30 years and has only seen their
tracks. I personally feel real
lucky. I think (a) the cougars and bears in the area
are not real human habituated (even on Labor Day
weekend, even with bow hunting season going, the area
wasn't real busy), (b) it may have just eaten, as
the sun was behind the western ridge and it was kinda
that blue-sky-overhead twilight you get in mountain
valleys when the sun is still up but hidden and that
is one of their hunting times, or (c) it doesn't
like albino biped hairless elk for food. ;-)
The most amazing thing I remember about the
experience was watching my mind fork into about three
processes. The first was afraid, the second was
trying to remember what to do in a cougar encounter
(back away, don't turn around, don't maintain
eye contact, etc.), and the third was going
"Cool! A cougar! Wow! How beautiful!"
Somehow, I don't think a deer in the same
situation would be thinking those last
thoughts.
Sun. night heard an owl, but had no more
wildlife encounters that day. Went to bed with a
brief rain storm around 9:30. When the cloud cover
went away, the moon was so full that night (in fact,
all three nights) that it cast long shadows, and
actually woke me up around 4:00AM thinking the sun
was coming up. As an experiment, I could successfully
read the print on the cover of a book I had brought
*inside* the tent from the moonlight alone (another
night I went out in the middle of the night, and was
quite able to walk around without stumbling just with
the moonlight as illumination).
Mon. morning we hiked out, starting at 7:00AM.
We saw a herd of five to six elk at treeline in the
distance - for all the elk the area is supposed to
have (somewhere in the 20,000+ area, if I remember
correctly), they were rather absent because of the
hunting, I am sure. We made it back to the car in
record time (3.5 hours) via a reverse of the Sat.
route (helped by Mike and I taking most of Jim's
pack load - for a flat lander with no time for
acclimatization, he did amazingly well, but carrying
even 33-34 lbs. on Sat. had been understandably
trying for him, having arrived from approx. 600'
elevation less than 24 hours before, and with us
spending the whole weekend above 10,000'). We
were to the car by 10:30AM. The ride back was smooth
sailing until just above Silver Plume west of
Georgetown, then it was stop and go until Idaho
Springs (doing its job to remind me, as a Coloradoan,
that it is just stupid to go in the mountains on
Memorial or Labor Day weekends - now I won't
forget for another decade). We were back in the city
at 2:30PM.
Herein ends the trip report. All in all, an
excellent trip! Now, off to the store to buy pepper
spray! (not really ;-)
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