Trail-free Trek

Lulu Mountain has been lurking in the back of my brain since July. It looked like such a nice little mountain to climb when I saw it from Snow Lake and Thunder Pass near the Nokhu Crags. I felt like I had missed out.

I decided to revisit the area, but from a different route, just to mix things up. I read on SummitPost that climbing Lulu could be combined with climbing Thunder and Neota Mountains from the east. No real trail exists, but all I would need to do would be to follow the boundary between Rocky Mountain National Park and the Neota Wilderness through the woods until I gained enough elevation to simply follow the ridgeline.

I had a compass, a topomap, a decent sense of direction and a good hiking partner. I liked the sound of it.

A pretty red fox was eating some breakfast on the drive up the gravel road. He or she had some very sharp-looking teeth, visible even from the car. I parked a few miles past the fox, at the end of the public road. A scruffy road did continue further into the park, but only government or service vehicles for the Grand Ditch were allowed on it.

The Grand Ditch is one of those engineering feats built back in the late 19th/early 20th century when Man thought he could tame all of the natural environment. The Grand Ditch thwarts the Continental Divide, by taking water from the Colorado River near its source and sending it towards Fort Collins and Denver. In other words, water that should be headed for the Pacific, now will end up in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is some controversy about the Ditch, because the diversion of the water negatively affects fish in the Colorado and because it scars the natural landscape, especially inside the National Park. In 2003, part of the Grand Ditch was breached in a flood and the damage to the area is still quite visible. But anyone who thinks the Ditch might be filled in is kidding themselves. The Front Range communities are still growing (and still watering their lawns), so they're not going to give up any water rights. And the mindset of Man hasn't changed that much; as the inscription Engineering building on the University of Wyoming campus proclaims, "Strive on - The Control of Nature is Won Not Given".

So, on my hike, I attempted to get to know nature a little better by not even using a trail. My main man and I struck out through the forest, headed west, which always feels like the right direction for me. Whenever I have to take the Eastbound route, a little part of me always rebels. Anyway, the woods weren't too thick, and every once in a while a Park Boundary sign was posted on a tree, so the going wasn't too difficult. The two of us were careful, though, singing the Bear Aware song and making noise so as not to startle any sharp-toothed creatures. As we were climbing a steeper section, here and there following various game trails that started and stopped with no notice, a deer ran from our racket.

As the trees started to thin. approaching the shoulder of Mt. Neota, a camouflaged dude with a crossbow appeared. It was bow hunting season in Colorado, and one of the reasons I wanted to hike in the National Park was to avoid potentially dangerous encounters with hunters. It was pretty freaky to meet this guy in the middle of nowhere, but I was glad to see he wasn't pointing an arrow at me. I'm much less concerned about a serious-looking sportsman on foot than about a bunch of guys with four wheelers, beer and guns, but he didn't seem too pleased to see us, and I don't want to displease someone with a deadly weapon. Perhaps we had scared away the deer he was after, but he was on the national park side of the boundary. We said hello, and walked quickly on.

For the rest of the day, we didn't encounter anyone else until we were back at the car. After a particularly steep bit, we climbed above the treeline and made it to the top of Mt. Neota at 11,734 feet. Since the hike started at just over 10,000, it wasn't that strenuous of a climb, but it still included lots of vegetation changes, which I always find really interesting. There were still some wildflowers blooming, but the landscape was headed for fall with reds and golds becoming more common than greens.

From the summit of Neota, I took this picture of Lulu Mountain on the left, Thunder Mountain on the right, and the Crags peeking through the middle. Very cool landscape.

Before reaching Lulu, summiting Thunder Mountain was required. At 12,028 feet, it's higher than the highest peak near Laramie. Medicine Bow Peak, which I have climbed every year since moving out here, only reaches 12,013. The mountains are very different though, with Medicine Bow Peak being made of fabulously colored quartzite, while Thunder Mountain is more rhyolite lava based. Lulu is believed to be an extinct volcano.

It was a very pretty climb, though, with vistas on every side. The ridgeline still followed the Park boundary, but the authorities had chosen writing that made me feel like I was hiking the Canadian or Mexican border...

Thunder Mountain was super-windy at the top, but the views were fabulous. I could see all the way to the Zirkels to the west. The entire National Park spread out to the south and east. The Crags came into view with great early-autumn colors.

From the Thunder summit, I had to descend carefully down to the also windy saddle and then climb again onto Lulu. If I had thought the wind was strong before now, I was mistaken. At the top of Lulu, 12, 201 feet, it was one permanent gust. Despite the stack of rocks someone had constructed to serve as a wind-break, I couldn't stay up there too long.

We decided to make our own loop back to the car by following another ridgeline and descending to a valley to hike along a stream. The gentians were blooming, the sun was shining, and it was warm once out of the wind. In the valley, we heard the very strange-sounding bugle of an elk, then saw the bull a few minutes later. He left in a hurry, probably thinking he needed more musical practice, since instead of a herd of lovely female elk, he only got two humans for his trouble.