07/20/01:
Another bad night with little sleep. There are three more hikes I wanted to do in the Mesa Lakes Area of the Grand Mesa National Forest but 6-7 days with almost no sleep is too much. So, in seeking lower elevation I drove the 3-4 hours to Curecanti National Recreation Area.
Leaving Grand Mesa I saw a buck with the largest rack I think I've ever seen. It must have been 10 points easy. Marmots were all over the roads for some reason and I had a tough time avoiding them. A few close calls but no splats!
At Sapinero, the Gunnison River has been dammed where it enters Black Canyon creating Blue Mesa Lake and the Curecanti National Recreation Area. It's 20 miles long with 96 miles of shoreline and is the largest body of water in Colorado.
The west end of the lake looked interesting with high bluffs looking down on the other side of the lake. As I got eastward, the bluffs turned into rolling hill type mountains which are less interesting. There're several trails so I think I'll stay through the weekend before heading up to the Black Canyon National Park.
07/21/01 Paddling Sapinero Basin:
I got an early start and was launching from Lake Fork Marina at 8am. There are 4 boat ramps at this marina and they were pretty busy at this hour (I thought it was Friday but it was Saturday). I got the kayak off the rack and was pulling away when I heard a scraping noise. Looking in the side mirror I saw the kayak following along behind me. When I stopped and got out, it was 3-4 feet behind the truck and not attached. I presume the rudder got hooked under the rear bumper and then broke loose.
At 7500 feet I slept pretty well. This is also the highest elevation I think I've paddled. The temperature in the 60's, the sun and a 10 knot wind in my face as I headed east. I was pretty sure the wind would shift to the west in the afternoon, and it did. Even with the sun, the sky was filling up with some dark clouds. I had been warned to get off the water before late afternoon to avoid the frequent thunderstorms around 4-5pm. It was strange with the wind blowing from the east and the storm clouds moving towards the northwest. I dunno how they did it. I guess the wind I was getting was just a surface wind.
I didn't seem to be making much progress against the wind and assumed I was also paddling against some sort of current. The Blue Mesa dam wasn't far away and they might have been releasing water. With all the trailers at the marina there still didn't seem to be that many boats on the water.
Cliffs and bluffs and Dillon Pinnacles sat back from the water a couple hundreds yards and rose up some 500+ feet while on the other side of the lake were lightly forested rolling hills and slopes. The clouds were pretty much gone by 9am and I was surprised to see I'd come 3.25 miles in an hour. Distances seem to be deceiving.
I paddled past the Dillon Pinnacles to the bridge which was about 4 miles from the marina. On the way back I turned into the West Elk Arm, a body of water flowing off into nowhere about a mile long. The sides were ho hum hills but the end of the arm provided nice views with cliffs.
After lunch I noticed big, heavy, white clouds with lots of black in them beginning to cover the skies again. These looked more like thunderclouds than the ones earlier. Those seemed to be just rain clouds. I'd been out for more than 4 hours and was paddling against the wind again so decided to bypass the Soap Creek Arm which also had some nice views in the distance.
I'll say one thing for Blue Mesa Lake, it's very, very clean. I saw one cigarette butt in the water and nothing else on the water or the shore. In general, I think lakes, trail, roads, etc. are much cleaner out west than back east.
07/22/01:
I awoke to 10-12 magpies screaming, screeching and squabbling amongst themselves. The magpie is a pretty bird, three times the size of a robin, black with a white chest and white stripe on its wings and a long tail. These guys were bickering with each other and God forbid one of them should pick up a piece of paper or something and the rest would zoom in on it. A post had been set in the ground and 3-4 of them chased each other around it like playing ring-around-the-rosy.
Hiking Dillon Pinnacles Trail:
The first mile of this 4 mile round trip is easy ascending through sagebrush. The second mile becomes moderate as the incline increases. The trail follows along the base of the pinnacles and then enters a small loop with good views of Blue Mesa Lake. This is where I had paddled to yesterday.
Hiking Pine Creek Trail:
Except for the 232 steps at the beginning of the trail (and at the end), this is an easy trail and very beautiful. Pine Creek follows the steps down to the Gunnison River below the Blue Mesa Dam. From that point the trail is flat as the Gunnison River flows slowly into the Black Canyon. Steep canyon walls (not sandstone or limestone but 'regular' rock) rise hundreds of feet on both sides. I think the official trails ends at a dock for river tours 1 mile out but the trail does continue another half mile beyond that. Then it turns mushy and disappears underwater.
This trail is along what used to be an old railroad bed. It and the trains that ran on it were much smaller than normal. Rudyard Kippling rode this railroad and was duly impressed.
Hoping to find a put in to the Gunnison River I drove 15 miles to a dam at Cimmeron. Unfortunately, the road came out below the 200-300 foot dam there. Such a pretty river and no access, unless you call carrying up and down 232 steps access.