French and Casco the Hard Way - Separately!

Andrew and I actually set out to do French and Casco on day one and then Oklahoma on day two, but unfortunately unexpected weather changed our plans.

First Up: The Road

Forest Road 110J will lead you to your first encounter with Halfmoon Creek. Up to this point, the road is doable in a regular SUV. So depending on what you're driving, and your capabilities, the first thing to consider is if your hike starts here, or if you can continue. From here is an additional 2 miles RT, but if you have a 4WD with clearance and skills/stomach for pretty rough off-roading, you can continue for the next mile to the second encounter with Halfmoon Creek. I drove my stock 4Runner; I'll emphasize again the road is very rough and requires a comfort level with off-road navigation.

Note: if you plan to keep driving, once you cross Halfmoon Creek it will seem like you "should" keep going straight through a really messy section. We got out of the vehicle to scope out good lines, and I still scraped. It was pitch dark for us, so what we failed to see was that right after the creek crossing, to the LEFT, is a much easier workaround to take.

Your second encounter with Halfmoon Creek is your stopping point unless you have a modded-out 4WD. You cannot make it through this section unscathed in a stock 4WD. We watched an entire off-roading group tackle this crossing, so I can confidently say just don't try it unless you're a serious off-roader with a serious rig.

At this creek crossing, there are only a couple places to park. Note that if you're wanting to camp or car camp, level spots are barely a thing here. It's a very small and somewhat narrow area. (And please don't block the road. There are a lot of off-roaders that come through here.)

Next Up: The Hikes - To the Stats, We Go!

French on its own --
Total mileage = 9.09
Total elevation gain = 3158'

Mileage splits:
Mile 1 = 341'
Mile 2 = 344'
Mile 3 = 640'
Mile 4 = 702'
Mile 5 to end = 1131'

Casco on its own --
Total mileage = 8.35
Total elevation gain = 3108'

Mileage splits (first part differs slightly from French due to minor GPS tracking disparities):
Mile 1 = 322'
Mile 2 = 335'
Mile 3 = 499'
Mile 4 = 1614'
Mile 5 to end = 338'

FRENCH

We were planning to summit French and then follow the ridge over to Frasco and Casco, certainly the efficient way to get both peaks. The weather window was a little interesting: there was to be some precipitation moving in mid-morning, and we were completely okay with that. Actual storm activity wouldn't occur until much later in the morning; maybe a little earlier than a typical monsoonal day, but not by a lot. We felt good about our earlier start and anticipated we should only encounter precip.

Did I immediately trip into Halfmoon Creek up to my calves? Yes. Yes, I did. (I took the following picture later in the day.) Andrew's voice came at me from the right side of the road, before the creek, and he said, "Mary, there's logs over here." Oops.

Just follow the road for 3+ miles.

French and Casco eventually come into view:

If starting with French, or doing only French, the cabin ruins at 12,500' is your endpoint as far as road hiking goes. We were here by 6:15 a.m.

At this point, you'll deviate from the road and just head straight up-slope toward French. The slope is easily navigable as demonstrated by my doodle dots.

The sky was blue, and nothing seemed amiss. We took a small break and a deep breath before heading up the very steep slope. (It is a bit of a slog.) Also, if you're feeling a sense of foreboding by my saying "and nothing seemed amiss", you'd be right - haha.

Once we were higher on the slope, looking back at La Plata we could see some cloud activity. To me, it looked like the beginnings of the precipitation we expected to roll in, though it seemed earlier than what we anticipated. Still blue skies over Elbert and overall lovely conditions, so for all intents and purposes, we were unconcerned.

As our visibility beyond the ridge increased the higher we went, however, we started seeing some other cloud activity and active precip falling in the distance. Again, the precip was expected; however, given the appearance much earlier than anticipated, I was starting to grow a little bit skeptical about the disparity with what the forecast had shown. But - it wasn't warm, it wasn't humid, and to me the clouds didn't seem to be building upward, so my mind was still on "only precip, and precip is fine".

The rapidity of the weather change started gaining our attention, however, when we reached the ridge with 300 feet to go to the summit. The wind and snow kicked up. Again, the precip was expected - but this was far earlier than forecasted. We agreed to summit quickly, and once back down to the ridge we'd re-assess.

Once on the summit, my confusion about the weather persisted, and we now had better visibility to pockets of upward build; so our decision-making actually happened pretty instantaneously that this was going to be our only summit of the day. We quickly snapped a few pics, marveled at the rainbow in front of us, and then - and then the thunder happened. I have to say, this is the first time I've ever heard thunder up high at 8 a.m.!

We engaged a hasty retreat, and snow turned into rapid-firing graupel. A couple more thunder claps happened - but then pouring rain and nothing else. I enjoy hiking in the rain, so the rain was fine. But my confusion about this weather event really nagged at me.

And then, annoyingly enough, 45 minutes later back at 12,500' and the cabin ruins, nothing but bluebird day! As quickly as it all rolled in, it rolled out.

We had made the right decision. We couldn't have known the storm was just a fleeting moment, and who wants to be a sitting duck in the unknown? But literally from 8:45 a.m. onward, the whole day was bluebird magic. We sat at the cabin ruins discussing our options. We didn't have visibility beyond the ridge, so objectively speaking there was still the possibility of lurking storm activity. If the forecast played out as originally anticipated, we would end up caught off-guard again if we headed back up. So we decided to trek back to the vehicle, have a relaxing day, and come back up for Casco the next morning.

Intermission: The Off-Roaders

Mid-afternoon, we were slightly dozing off in our respective sleep areas when all-of-a-sudden a big group of off-roaders drove in and surrounded us. Being an off-roader, myself, albeit not to the extent of these folks, I got up pretty quickly to observe. This ended up occupying us for a huge chunk of time and was quite entertaining! The people were great fun, as well; good camaraderie. Each vehicle gave the obstacles a go. Of the two that attempted THE ultimate gnarfest, neither made it. (One of them is pictured below.) But all vehicles made it through the section to the right. That said, a couple folks took decent damage, and there wasn't one vehicle that didn't take a hit on a giant, unavoidable boulder.

CASCO

Casco would prove to be the FAR more enjoyable peak of the two, in its own right.

Our day started off the same as the day before with the 3+ mile road trek into the basin. (In the dialogue of Sam and Frodo: "This looks strangely familiar." "Because we've been here before.")

We had familiarized with the usual descent route for Casco, but we figured we'd just ascend in whatever way looked most appealing to us; so we did. We ditched the road right around 12,300', bunny-hopped over South Halfmoon Creek, and headed into the tundra.

We aimed toward the obvious drainage that runs a significant part of the slope, and we stayed to the right of it. This not only proved to be a good way to go, trekking-wise, but it was beautiful! This slope was WAY more pretty than French's because it was luscious and bursting with wildflowers the whole way. The tundra was also more consistent, not much interplay of scree. So, overall, the enjoyment factor was far greater.

The day's forecast was playing out nicely - nothing but blue skies and perfect temperature!

Once we reached the start of the rocks, nothing was going to be more pleasant one way vs. another way, probably, so we kind of picked our own ways just aiming for the ridge. I went a little left, Andrew went a little right.

Views from the ridge into the next basin over are great, and La Plata is always pretty!

There's a social trail pretty much the entirety of the ridge, but the ridge is straightforward enough there's not really any guesswork. I thought it was fun because there are occasional rocky interruptions, and gaining the summit had a few fun rocky moves.

As opposed to the day before, we spent a lot of time on summit. It was super pleasant, and the clarity of the day even afforded us views all the way out to the Elks! But here's La Plata again instead just because it's so pretty.

When we'd had enough, we descended down the ridge the same way and this time stopped to look at the beautiful groupings of Sky Pilots amid all the rocks. (They're one of my favorite wildflowers!)

For descent from the ridge, we followed more closely what's described in the published route description. So we went a little further on the ridge than where we came up before we dove off, and the drainage remained to our left. The descent route is certainly also a good ascent route; it's just one of those slopes that's pretty easy to navigate, overall. Nothing tricky, and your destinations are always well within sight.

Final Thoughts

Highly recommend trying to do these two peaks in the same day, but if you have to do either of them on their own, obviously they're pretty straightforward for that. I'm a little bummed we didn't have the opportunity of hiking the whole ridge and hitting Frasco, but I also found Casco to be so enjoyable on its own that I don't really care. Certainly, we also had the added bonus of it being wildflower season, so everything was green, flowery, and beautiful. Oddly, that seemed much more prominent on Casco and not so much on French, but I think the drainage may have a lot to do with that.

As for Oklahoma, "the one that got away" that weekend, we came back for it in October.