Snowshoeing South Park Trail #600

The past month has been pretty lame from an outing perspective. For all of January, I only headed out to the mountains once…disappointing. Snowshoeing South Park Trail #600 was my attempt to try to get up to Square Top Lakes. It went pretty poorly. Read on for a narrative of my struggles.

Goal – Square Top Lakes

When Bryson and I attempted Shelf Lake, we noticed that South Park Trail #600 also crossed through that same location. The upper section of this trail provides a route up to Square Top Lakes off Guanella Pass Road. I’d never hiked that route before, so thought it’d make a great snowshoe trek. Umm, maybe I’d forgotten that we didn’t make it up to Shelf Lake?

Going back to the Shelf Lake Trailhead

On January 5th, the weather was supposed to be nice so I headed out for this alternative route. As I approached the turnoff to the trailhead, the weather seemed to be different than forecast as shown by the picture at the beginning of this post.

The clouds didn’t scare me too much though. Hiking and snowshoeing while its snowing is pretty relaxing. Plus, the temps were pretty mild so onward and upward, or a little ways up it turns out.

The road out to the trailhead was a little dicier than when Bryson and I went to Shelf Lake. There were longer periods of deep snow, although the Jeep pulled me through (thank goodness!).

The Jeep said it was 30 when I arrived at the trailhead. I skipped the ski pants and jacket and stuck with just my hiking pants and a light layer over my base layer (e.g. long johns). I kept my additional layers, ski gloves, water, food and microspikes in my pack. Lately I’ve been using my REI Magma 850 jacket for hiking. I didn’t have it on but had it “at the ready” when temps dropped as I climbed.

Snowshoeing up South Park Trail #600

The trail was pretty clear at the beginning. It looked like someone had recently been on the initial section. Those tracks headed up to Shelf Lake (wonder if they made it?) with no tracks at all headed up Trail #600. After two cairns, the “trail” disappeared into nothingness. So much for visually tracking the trail! This video gives you an idea of the navigational clarity within 200 yards of the trailhead. Let me know if you see the trail! There are some nice animal tracks though.

I wandered through the woods checking the GPS once in a while to make sure I was somewhat on track. For the most part, the trekking wasn’t too bad until I hit a relatively steep section. The GPS said to stay to the left, although that would put me in a gulch. I opted for climbing up the incline. It was like climbing up an icy incline on roller skates dragging a few bags of luggage behind you. So not too bad. 🙂 Of course, I could have taken off the snowshoes, put on the microspikes, and pulled out the ice axe to help get up the incline…but I didn’t. No one said I was especially smart.

Once past the incline, the “trail” wasn’t too bad in terms of incline. The snow, however, was soft so I was sinking down. It also seemed that I was carrying a lot of snow on me. My hood had happily caught snow getting flipped up from my snowshoes. My shirt had somehow gathered up a lot of caked-on snow, maybe from falling down and scrambling over trees? Navigation was getting to be a challenge too. I like to think I have a “feel” for the direction I’m heading by reading the inclines relative to the topo map. Thank goodness I relied on the GPS versus my “feeling”. The GPS and compass showed the direction north which I was convinced was west. I’m not the best navigator in the world, but I’m constantly amazed by early settlers. How in the world did they avoid getting constantly lost in these mountains?

Once again, turning around!

Around 1.5 miles, I came across a nice open meadow. There were decent views given the cloud cover. Some animal, maybe an elk or moose, had been digging at the base of the willows to eat. The tracks were relatively fresh, although I hadn’t heard anything in the woods. This may have been due to my heaving breathing from exhaustion.

The .5 miles after the meadow were difficult. I kept getting off course and going over and around a lot of fallen trees, adding to my huffing and puffing. At two very slow miles, I decided to turn around. Better conditioned people would have continued on and had a wonderful day! I didn’t mind, though. There was time to rest up a bit and take some pictures. It was pretty peaceful in the forest while the snow fell. Capturing the swirling snow on video picked up my spirits.

Snowshoeing Guanella Pass – Maybe attempt from the North

My motivation has been pretty subdued since this failed outing. Maybe I should try approaching Square Top Lakes from the north side of Guanella Pass. The elevation gain is a bit less, so maybe this out of shape old man can make it?

Partial track