moving on up

Sunday morning found us up at 7 a.m., loaded up and checked out and caffeinated by the town's coffee cart by 8.  It was already 74 F in Baker but as we drove straight up to the Wheeler Peak campground, it started raining (of course because who doesn't like to camp in the rain?) and the temperature plummeted to 51 F.  We circled the campground once, scoping out available campsites, and then on our second time around, pounced on #23.  It was raining, though, so we just sat in the car and ate PB&Js and read for a while after we paid for two nights.

Entering an aspen grove

When the weather started to dry up, I walked around the campground a bit, checking out the neighbors and confirming that we were in the site we wanted (we were).  Around 11:30, we deemed it dry enough to take a hike.  The Lehman Creek Trail connects Wheeler Peak Campground with the Upper Lehman Creek Campground so we did that, hiking down to see if Maisie and her parents were around.  They weren't at their campsite so after refilling our water, we turned around and went back up.

It was quite humid and we got quite sweaty

It was a bit of a humid slog with the return trip all uphill, climbing steadily with few switchbacks as the trail largely followed the creek down the drainage.  The rocky trail goes through several microclimates, however - grassy meadows, aspen stands, evergreen groves - so at least the scenery was pretty.  We also went past the start of the Osceola Ditch, an eighteen-mile hand-dug waterway constructed in the late 1800s, in an attempt to bring water to a nearby gold mine.

Sagebrush fields

We set up camp when we got back to our campground.  We also put on several layers and I fretted about having forgotten both the tarp to put under the tent and the extra blanket that we usually bring for cool weather camping.  (Apparently I wasn't nearly as organized as I thought I'd been.)  Dinner was black beans and rice with extra veggies and some noodles thrown in for extra bulk.  There was a campfire ban in place due to dry weather conditions so we only stayed up long enough for the stars to come out.  Or rather, long enough for the stars to supposedly come out as it was too cloudy to see them.  That was okay, though, since we had big plans for the next day.

Site #23, private and shaded

Hike stats:  2:39 hike time/2:57 total time; 2.7 mp.h. moving average; 7.22 miles; 1,970 feet of elevation.

Uphill finish - woohoo!