Paul Humphreys Adventures
Reflections & tales from a life of adventure faith & Family
The sleeping surface tour
It took a while but below they lie. A selection of our recent holiday/vacation to Colorado. We were there for a week. And featured about as many different forms of sleeping surfaces as you could imagine.
1st night spilt between a plane that left ATL late & then a nice bed at Highlands Conference Center near Estes Park, Co. 3 nights on the hard ground of Rocky Mountain National Park, 1 night in a bed in the ‘nurses cabin’ back at Highlands (no room in lodge) thats cool, i can sleep virtually anywhere. Then last night at swanky Sheraton Devner. (Got a killer deal the day before online)
At our final destination on Day 1. Sandbeach lake. Short hike (4hrs) up from the trailhead. With super heavy packs. Robin picked up some blisters. But worth it for the view. We camped here for 2 nights. Looking west, had great view of Mt Meeker, Longs Peak & stunning sunsets.
Typical on the trail shot. Hard to see, but our packs were huge & heavy. Robin did great and certainly carried her share of the load. Was strange for me to be moving in this type of terrain with heavy boots & gear on.
Right before we got on the trail the rangers were warning us about A LOT of bear activity and that we had to be really careful. This included having all food stored in ‘bear cans’, which we did, and cooking well away from tent. Then at night not having anything scented in the tent. even toothpaste. This all made for some anxious moments the first night, and over active hearing & imagination. But we were fine the whole week. This after hearing horror stories about bear interactions from the places we were even camping at. We later concluded that those were idiots that weren’t cautious.
Our view on Tuesday. After an early start which included some great map & compass work (we wanted to do this, really we did) and a little bush whacking we made our way up this valley. Meeker is our of shot to the right and Longs is back behind the high point on the false summit. The weather was getting bad and a little high up we decided to bail because it was only 9am and already storming. It snowed on us too. We got to about 12,000ft here. The next photo shows the contrasting weather we had all week.
This was on the way back down to Sandbeach Lake.
The view from our tent. tough huh? move over HGTV
On Wednesday we packed up and with sadness left our great spot at Sandbeach Lake with the intention on travelling to Thunder Lake. In the next valley over and about 500ft higher than Sanbeach lake (10,500ft). There is no trail from Sandbeach to Thunder Lake. Most of the trails in the Wild Basin Area travel East/West and we needed to go North/South. No problem for 2 adventures like Robin & I. So we went to the southern end of Sandbeach then navigated & bushwhacked down to a trail to then hike up to Thunder. We were off trail for several hours and out here where the features are so large (AKA mountains etc) its relatively easy nagivating. We did encounter a few people once of the trail who gave us some strange looks upon hearing what we had done. Above is our view at Thunder lake. Again a real tough setting. haha. At all our our camping sites (remember these are remote, not like pull up car camping) we were fortunate to have this sort of site, well worked on by previous people. This was where we cooked and ate several nights. Well sheltered. and even with a few bug coils left over to burn. And after a hard day climbing, a good ‘kitchen’ and good food is important.
i think this photo speaks for itself. Taken at Thunder Lake. Enjoying the outdoors and outdoor pursuits like both of us like to do. While we both canhave separate interactions with it we always come back to photos like this.
Rocky Mountain NP. Is a great place to hike and climb. While we didnt get up Longs Peak like we wanted to. We really had no agenda and everything else that we did more than meet what we needed to gain from this trip.
Planning in easy, permits are easy to get. But it does fill up fast as they limit amounts of people out there, which is good! The park people are totally ok with you planning your own adventure if you can demonstrate your skill level to them. And were cool with us going off trail and navigating our way around.
Already planning our next trip back.
Then to make this post even better. Its raining here. WE NEED IT. Fun to sit in the sunroom and watch and listen to it.
Paul Humphreys Adventures 
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