“Walking isn’t a lost art – one must, by some means, get to the garage.” ~Evan Esar

 Buffalo Creek, CO Segment 4- FS 543 2nd Crossing to Long Gulch

Our plans to hike this section get delayed, this time by Carol, who develops a hip problem. Doctor’s orders; no hiking for a month. That, combined with Tim and I taking business trips, brings us to the end of June. Carol is still having some discomfort but is improving. Her son, Steven flies in from New Jersey to spend most of the summer with us and we have our family vacation to California planned the first two weeks of July. When we come back, we discover that Tim and Jill did Segment 4, 5, and part of 6 without us during their vacation. They didn’t think that Carol would be able to hike any more so they decided to press on. Carol is now doing well and we plan on doing the next 3 segments over the next 3 weekends to catch up to Tim and Jill. We decide to do Segment 4 with Carol’s son, Steven, and split it up into 2 days. We will set up camp near the middle, at the North Fork Trail Head. The logistics of this segment took some calculating as it is about an hour and a half drive from the beginning of the segment to the end. This is due to the Lost Creek Wilderness, and although it is only 16.2 trail miles through the wilderness, we have to drive around it.

Carol and Steven at Camp

July 25, 2003 We depart from home with two vehicles and drive to the North Fork Trail Head up a fairly rough, high clearance road. As the 1989 Nissan Sentra is not high clearance, we park it off FS 127 before we turn on to the North Fork Spur. We set up our tent here which we will use tonight and tomorrow night after hiking back to it. We have a fire, roast some marshmallows, and then go to sleep for the night.

July 26, 2003 We get up, eat, and start the drive to the beginning of Segment 4. We drop the Explorer off at the Long Gulch Trail Head, which is the end of Segment 4. We start our hike at 9:40 AM. The first 3 miles climbs 1000 feet and gets us over the 9000-foot mark. We are concerned about Steven and how he would do, being a flat-lander and all. We quickly discover that youth (he is 14) and flat-lander beats older and acclimatized. We have lunch at about the 5-mile mark, just before we begin our ascent above 10,000 feet. We top out at 10,500 feet and begin a slow descent. As we take a break, we see storm clouds developing, and decide to get moving again. Pushing towards camp, the storm clouds get closer and lightning strikes the ridges above us.

Steven in Meadow By North Fork

We emerge from the woods into a long meadow about a mile from our camp. The lightning continues to hit the ridges around us, and we pick up the pace. All this flashing makes us nervous, but we finally reach our camp and crawl in to the tent. As soon as we get inside it starts raining and doesn’t stop for 5 hours. We finished at 2:25 PM. We hiked 8.8 miles in 4 hours and 45 minutes with a 2200 feet elevation gain. Our site was fairly sheltered by large trees and we manage to cook outside and light a campfire while it rains around us. Somehow, we stay pretty dry and go to bed wondering what tomorrow has in store.