TR–Maroon Bells Wilderness

[Kimberly Wersal]

Okay, folks, first effort at posting a trip report–I'll start out small. Sorry, it's a little heavy on human interest shots.

This was our 3 day trip into the Maroon Bells Wilderness, entering from the south side (near Crested Butte). We started up the Copper Creek Trail in a light rain, which, fortunately, dried up after an hour or so, leaving brilliant sunshine. Arriving at Copper Lake we set up camp and were able to stay dry in the Double Rainbow when a series of rain/thunder/squalls moved through intermittently throught the evening.

The next morning dawned crystal clear with frost on the grass. We hiked up from Copper Lake past Copper Pass on on up to Triangle Pass, at nearly 13,000 feet. The views toward the Maroon Bells were spectacular as were views in the other direction to Castle Peak and down toward Conundrum Hot Springs. Castle Peak was dusted with fresh snow from the night before.

We descended from Triangle Pass on the Aspen side, then traversed west to East Maroon Pass, then back down to our camp at Copper Lake. For once, the Colorado weather stayed fine and sunny. We enjoyed our FBC mexican rice with beef, and retired early.

Sunday morning we visited with neighboring BPers before packing up and hiking back to the trailhead. As we hopped in the truck, the first raindrops fell–good timing!

[Kimberly Wersal]

Well, crap, that was a disaster…. this is why I don't post TRs!

[Steven Killion]

Kimberly, thanks for the TR post. Don't get discouraged. I enjoy the human interest photos and would love hear about your gear as well.

[Brad Fisher]

Looks good to me. Thanks for sharing.

[Angela Zukowski]

Maroon Bells is beautiful… you must have had a great time! Wish I could go back.

[Tom Clark]

I don't think it's bad. You might want to go into the edit mode to add a few RETURNS between the each photo and the text. For some reason, the software sometimes removes them, causing things to stretch out across the page, instead of stacking up so the readers can more easily review them.

[Dondo .]

It looks good to me, Kimberly. You can probably go back in and take out the duplicated first photo. I especially like the last photo. It really gives an idea of the spaciousness of the area and makes me want to get back up there.

[Kimberly Wersal]

Thanks guys– I'm amazed anyone had the patience to scroll all over the place to actually view the scattered photos! (taken with my OLD 3.1 MP camera). I tried to put a few returns between pics, but obviously didn't get that right.

The last one was my favorite too– I have to admit that I tried to reinact the musical portion of the scene from "The Sound of Music", much to the displeasure of husband and dog.

I love my Conduit for 2-4 day trips! I was trying to work my husband over to get him to trade his Gregory Z55 for a ULA pack, but with production shut down for now, it's a moot point. The Double Rainbow was nice and solid through the occasional squall on the first evening. We are using a Hyperflow filter– I know there have been mixed reviews on this, but we are liking it (though the backflushing is kind of a pain)–it's nice and light, easy to pump, and taste generally isn't an issue with the water sources we use.

I've really enjoyed fine-tuning our gear. Well, MY gear. Now if my husband will just let me get to work on his….

[Author]

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