Over the long weekend of 4 Sep 09, Tracy and I headed to Colorado to do some backpacking

in the West Elk Wilderness.  We spent Friday night in Grand Junction, and then hit the Lowline

Trail (Google Map) near Horse Ranch Park.  We hiked up and over Beckwith Pass, and down

into the meadows on the other side.  The views from Beckwith back into the Raggeds were

pretty good, but once we got into the meadows, we saw hundreds and hundreds of cows.  The

weather started looking bad, so we started looking for a campsite.  We spent over an hour

trying to find a suitable site, and never did find an existing site.  And then we spent the rest of

the evening shooing away cows.  We had planned on spending three days out here, but with

the difficulty we had finding a camp site, and especially because of all the cows, we decided to

hike out the next day.  On Sunday we drove into Crested Butte, only to see how crowded it was

on a holiday weekend.  We hiked a little into the Raggeds Wilderness, but there were too many

people at all the Maroon Bells Wilderness trailheads we tried near Crested Butte and Aspen to

be able to get into that wilderness.  We drove around a lot on Sunday, including going up and

over Cottonwood Pass, and hiking into the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness.  We ended up in

Buena Vista, CO, and camped just outside of town in the nice montane forests.  The next day

we checked out the Mount Massive Wilderness, which we decided we really liked and want to

go back to hike some more, and drove over Independence Pass into Aspen.  Aspen was

overflowing with people, so we hit the road and headed on home.

We learned that we really didn't like West Elk or the Raggeds.  The scenery just wasn't all that,

and the cows made it pretty unenjoyable.  In Crested Butte we decided we were going to quit

our jobs and become hippies, and then in Aspen we decided we needed to become multi-

millionaires...it was a weekend of extremes...