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Me, my husband and my neighbors left from Denver Wed. night and drove just a little over 4 hours to Lake city. We turned in Lake City onto 2nd street and found the road for Engineer pass. I can't remember the exact mileage, but we followed Gerry Roach's directions to the start of the 4 wheel drive road. We expected a campground before this road, but no such luck. It was raining and very late, I think past midnight. We decided we had no choice but to head up the 4 wheel drive road for an informal campsite. Right after we turned up the road, there were several, thank goodness! We still drove up a little farther and found a nice level site about a mile or two up the road. We set up tents and finally hunkered down after 1am. We thought we'd be up by 6am, but when that alarm went off and it was still raining, we all fell back asleep. We finally rose from the dead around 8am. We thought we'd just go for a hike and see where it led us. After food and caffeine we drove up to the trailhead and started hiking. The clouds were hovering overhead and it was drizzling from time to time. Occassionally we would get a glimpse of sunlight.
The trail is in perfect condition, it is super easy to follow and as you start walking you can see Uncompahgre ahead of you. After about 2.5 miles you switchback up to a section where you go around the mountain and have to contend with approx 150 ft. of scramble on lose dirt(in our case- wet), and loose talus. It isn't hard and it is over before you know it. Once through that, the trail is easy to follow as it heads up onto the plateau that Uncompahgre is famous for. We stopped there because the weather got so bad we couldn't see and we heard thunder. It was entirely too late to summit. 1:30pm and we should have been down. We don't normally summit this late and we honestly didn't plan on finishing. The GPS said 14,020ft when we turned around so I am happy we made it that far. We want to do this one again anyway. It was so pretty and the trail literally prestine!! I can't wait to go back and actually sign the summit register!
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
using your judgement and turning back. This is so hard to do but I always admire when people have the prudence to turn around so close to the top. The mountain will always be there, you'll get it for sure! Nice pics too!
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