Sept 4-5, 2010 - Camping & some fishing

Avi and I decided to hit Guanella Pass to do some camping with a neighbor and his young daughter. His daughter and Avi are a year apart and are best friends, so this was going to be a fun time with just the Dad's. We left HR around 9, got to Scott's around 10 to pick up the camper and then found that it had a flat, did a quick pit stop tire change and decided to hit Big O tire to get the flat fixed. Luckily it was only the valve stem and was fixed in less than 10 minutes for free. Big O is a great place.

We hit Grant and took a right and headed up Guanella Pass. There were a lot of people at all the low altitude camp sites, but it started thinning out pretty quickly. I was a little nervous because everyone had told me that it would be very crowded and all the good spots would be taken on a holiday weekend (especially leaving Saturday morning) - this was (thankfully) not true. We drove by a few spots that had people in them but went deep into the woods and had no one in the deepest parts, the third place we drove into was right at the base of the winding paved road that heads up to Guanella Pass. We drove into a big meadow and found a very nice spot, large enough for about a group of 10 tents/campers - but I didn't want to take up this huge area, so we found a spot right next to the road, but right on the creek. It was perfect.

We set up camp and then took a ride up to the pass and walked down to the lake.



You can see Mt Bierstadt (14,060 ft) here in the picture (top right peak).



It was a beautiful day, a little windy, but about 60 degrees - even up there.

We hiked around our campsite a bit, checking out the creek that went through it. I tried to take an underwater video of an undercut bank that held a couple of tiny fish, but the water was took dark and nothing came out (too bad). We did play in the water and did see quite a few small fish.



That night we played an hour long game of Uno that wouldn't end. Then Avi decided to do something extremely stupid and put her finger on the lantern glass and burned her fingers. She screamed for over 40 minutes, saying she wanted to go home and wanted her mommie. It was a bit embarrassing and out of control - I think neighboring campers over 100 yards away thought something terribly wrong happened. I iced the finger and tried my hardest to calm her down, but she was over tired, hadn't napped and was just hysterical. Fun time. She passed out around 9:30 and I slept with her on one side of the camper - along with a passed out mutt at my feet. To say the least I did not get much sleep.

Avi and I got up at 7, made a fire and started some pancakes. Miraculously the finger felt fine - just the normal bubble on the fingertip from a burn. My neighbor woke up, ate breakfast, then we went to try to get some of thise fish on a fly rod. I cast a caddis to a few fish, had one really good look, but no bite. We did see some beautiful fish including one 12 inch brookie that was green on top with a bright orange belly. Beautiful fish. The water was very very low - which I assuem is normal this time of year. We packed up cam and were home by 1:15pm today. I cleaned the camper and restocked it the rest of the afternoon.

This is the girls showing me their muscles.