I had a fourth of July holiday combined with a flex day combined with a furlough day that gave me five days off, and since my boyfriend Nick has not started his grad school yet, we decided to do a multiday backpacking trip. Nick made a YouTube video:

Day 1 – Goose Creek Trail 612

I had done this trail as my first solo backpacking overnight in 2019, so I was excited to go back and knew what to expect. We left early and drove a lot of dirt road to arrive at the trail head. This trail starts looking over fire damage from the 2002 Hayman Fire that burned for a month.

There were lots of wildflowers the entire hike! We descended into a shady forest along the creek, and had some uphill to gain before the campsite. I hoped to go to the creekside campsite I’d gone to the previous year, about 5 miles in.

Along the hike, we started to see distantly the giant, weird rock formations of the Lost Creek Wilderness.

There a short, worthwhile detours where we put down our packs to explore historic cabin ruins. According to the sign, the Lost Park Reservoir site between 1890 and 1913 attempted to create a reservoir damming lost creek, and these cabins were employee housing hand when from native trees. There’s even remains of beds/mattress/oven. It’s amazing!

After a some uphill hiking…

We got to our campsite fairly early (My campsite was free!) and were excited to hammock and read books all afternoon.

This was a great first day – no rain all afternoon. We were definitely tired and ready to rest and relax, with the nice trickle of the creek. It was surprisingly not very busy – we only saw a few people pass our camp on the trail. To me, it was a bit exciting and nerve wracking to find out what was next, as the next day we would get into a lot harder elevation gains and new territory.

Day 2 – Goose Creek to McCurdy Park

The next day was our most challenging day that at times made us ask WHY DOES ANYONE DO THIS. We got about 11.7 miles into the loop this day – so did around 6.7 or so miles. There was an incredible variation in landscape this day and steep up and downs. Supposedly we only gained about 1000 feet, but my GPS app measured 2500 between the ups and downs.

When I came in 2019, I’d gone on a bit up Goose Creek. It continues uphill through beautiful forest, which was gorgeous and quiet in the early morning.

Eventually it opens up to a beautiful viewpoint, which shows you how far up you have come.

We then turned onto the McCurdy Park trail, which was steep downhill.

This was a bit ominous – we knew we had more uphill to go. We descended into a beautiful aspen forest. The way that the sun glows through the aspen is quite magical.

We then had to go up and up and had huge rock formations ahead. It was hot, and challenging. We had a couple of steep up and downs among the red rocks.

At one point, we descended to a cave with the river flowing through, and a really cool campsite right there. We almost got lost, but our handy paper map plus GPS on phones helped. We stopped for lunch in the shade before pressing on.

It was hot, with more steep ups and downs. We ran out of water, but descended into an aspen valley near a creek and refilled with our water filter. We really wanted to make it to a meadow we had read about with good camping.

The last part was challenging. Some clouds, but a storm didn’t really roll through. We had an uphill portion in a forest that seemed endless, and everything hurt. We stopped a few times and made slow progress.

We looked so close to the meadow on the map, but it took forever. Finally, we reached the clearing and found some campsites in a beautiful meadow next to the creek.

It started to thunder so we set up our tent quick and waited out some thunder inside. It was already late afternoon. We were starving so we made our freeze-dried dinners. That chicken fried rice was the most delicious meal ever. However, the mosquitoes were horrible. We covered every part of our body and put our buffs over our faces, and devised a method of walking and eating to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

We split a cup of hot chocolate inside the tent. Of course, the mosquitoes started to die down as it got cold.

Several other tents joined the meadow – according to the paper map we had, it’s exactly halfway so a good campsite for people doing the trail as an overnight. We were all at least 200 feet apart though.

Day 3 – McCurdy Park to Lake Park to Hankins Pass

We woke up first to a beautiful sunrise, and walked across the meadow to take down our bear bag and make breakfast.

We set off feeling much better than the afternoon before. We knew we had a big climb up to the highest point on the trail, 11,500 feet. We went through the “McCurdy Park” area and passed lots of great campsites, including among a forest and out in another meadow.

We came to the junction of McCurdy Park and Lake Park and took a break before a steep uphill climb through switchbacks. It was at least shaded, and in the first part of the day. At the highest point, there is an incredible pile of red rocks with a great viewpoint.

We took our lunch break here and rested. There’s an awesome campsite, but I don’t think any water source close (dry campsite). From here, we headed down and down. It started to look more like a desert landscape than a forest, and was not shaded. We saw some trail runners which to me is mind blowing that they run any part of this.

We headed to a meadow around mile 17 where we had seen some campsites marked, which was we found. However, there didn’t seem to be a good water source close. There was some uphill coming up and so we tried to stop and camp, but a marshy pond was too difficult to get water from. However, the stopping was reinvigorating and we made it up a bit of downhill to go down and down and down.

We reached the intersection with Hankins Pass. There were very dark clouds that looked scary, but never really resulted in more than some light rain and ominous rumbling.

Then, we were tired and our feet hurt from all the downhill. We looked for a campsite. Hankins Pass luckily didn’t have any high mountain pass climbs, but was a gorgeous forest. However, the campsites we found only had stagnant water – perhaps in wetter years the creek was flowing. We kept going what felt like forever. Around mile 20.2 to 20.5 (so we probably did 8-9 miles this day total), we found a beautiful aspen campsite with a stream. We set up camp and miraculously, it seemed to be bug free. It was surprisingly not too late into the afternoon so we set up our hammocks.

Nick fell asleep and that hammocking and reading was some of the best ever. The scenery was beautiful. We made a nice dinner and hot chocolate and settled in for more hammocking to watch the sun go down. We settled in for a great sleep knowing that we only had a few miles to go the next day.

Day 4 – Hankins Pass to HOME

We were ready to head home on our last day. It was a beautiful sunrise as we woke up and made breakfast. The forest was really beautiful with early morning sun shining through.

The last part of Hankins pass had a few more nice campsites and we started to follow a creek.

It seemed like we had to cross the water a million times those last 3 miles or so. We stopped very little as it was a nice, peaceful, morning going downhill.

Finally, we reached the junction with the Goose Creek trail, where we had originally veered left. We headed slightly uphill in the sun to finish the trail. Apps and GPS seem to pin the loop between 21-25 miles – our map says it’s 23.4 miles.

Overall, this was a challenge for Nick and I, but we had an amazing time. We totally social distanced and completely missed the heat and loud illegal fireworks in Denver for the 4th of July. There’s a lot of backpacking to be done in Lost Creek Wilderness, so we definitely want to try more loops in the future.