Judd Falls & Copper Creek Lake Hike

Caleb & I headed to Gunnison last Wednesday to spend a few days at Krista's. We had fun spending time with her and her boyfriend Daniel and friend Silas. On Wednesday all of us except Daniel, drove out to Black Canyon and stopped at some overlooks to gaze at the view of the canyon walls and the river below. Krista, Caleb, and Silas decided to climb out over the ledge on the rocks. The picture to the left shows them climbing. Now if you look at the picture below they were climbing around at the very top right of the photo on the sides of the rocks. Yeah, not cool in my mind. I sat at the top all worried not wanting to watch them.
On Thursday Krista, Caleb, & I ventured out on a 9 mile hike. We had no idea we were getting ourselves into a 9 mile hike though. We hiked a mile to Judd Falls waterfall. Once we got to the waterfall we decided to eat lunch and then were all excited to make the hike up the lake at the top of the trail into the mountain peaks. The 3.5 mile trail to the top ended up being a bit more than we had expected with a winding river, piles of snow, colder temperatures, witnessing the meeting of a dog and a porcupine, and a setting sun while up on a mountain top at almost 12,000 feet. Needless to say

the hike was a lot of fun. Now let me expound on some of the above mentioned events. The 3.5 mile hike to the top of the trail where the lake sat took us 3 hours. It was a beautiful hike through aspen trees, evergreens, and fields with the Copper Creek running through it. The trail went right from one side of the river to the other side quite a few times so we had to wade through about a foot of water sometimes a little more or a little less to continue on the trail. We all ended up having soaked socks and shoes. This wasn't a burden to us, but just another part of the adventure. One point in time we looked up and noticed a lady hiking towards us with her dog. Immediately we knew something was wrong when we saw the dog. It has porcupine quills sticking all in it's nose and face. She said she removed the quills from his paws and they had been bleeding so much that she had carried him a ways. At the point we were passing her she was still about 2 miles from the parking lot. Thankfully, somehow our cell phone was able to get enough service to send out a text message and she was able to contact someone to let them know she was coming with the dog and they needed to get to a vet in town. We let her take our cell phone in case she needed to contact the person again about where to meet her and the dog and she would leave our cell phone back by our car off the trail. 

We continued on our hike alert for wildlife. No sightings of bears or mountain lions. Only some chipmunk noises and Krista spotting a porcupine that immediately ran off into the forest. As we got to about a mile out from the lake, the trail was covered with snow. We had to trudge through the snow which meant wet and cold socks, shoes, and pants again. We didn't want to turn back after going so far and not knowing how close we were to the top so we kept on going. We arrived to the lake right before 6 pm and figured we shouldn't dally around as we didn't want to be biking back through the mountains after the sun set. We booked it back down the trail back through the snow piles and through the cold Copper Creek and thankfully made it back well before the sun set and without seeing any lurking wildlife. 
We had a great time with Krista & Daniel grilling out for dinners and spending time exploring around Gunnison and Crested Butte. One night for dinner we grilled some elk meat that someone had given to Krista. The elk was pretty tasty. Caleb & I relaxed on Saturday while Krista ventured out for another waterfall hike with Daniel. Heard they had a great time on their hike as well. Today I drove one of our cars back to Colorado Springs which Krista had borrowed while Caleb was in the other car we had driven. I was a little concerned at first about driving through a mountain pass, but thankfully it wasn't too bad and I loved the views during the drive. I feel like Colorado has to be beautiful in every part of the state. Of course I haven't made it all over the state, but what I've seen has all been breath-taking. Here are some snapshots of our hiking and drives.

Houses around Mt. Crested Butte

Judd Falls- It was a mile hike to this waterfall. We decided to enjoy our lunch here before heading out to do the remaining hike to the lake which was at 11,800 feet hidden between mountain peaks.

This little guy kept scurrying all around us. He would come right up to us and watch us.

 

He was a very curious little fellow.

Right at Caleb's foot. He's waiting for us to share our lunch with him.

The first couple times we crossed the river we took our socks and shoes off and waded across. The water was quite cold. On the hike back down we were ready to just make it back to the car so we just waded through the river with socks and shoes and all on.

We made it to the lake 5 hours later. The last mile had patches of snow that was 2-3 feet deep that we had to walk through. We'd step onto the snow and then fall into it up to our knees and sometimes higher.

Snow flurries fell while we were sitting up at the top of the hike.

Caleb was tired and happy to have made it to the top. I was happy to be alive and breathing after gaining that much altitude and huffing and puffing up the trail. The view wasn't all that spectacular but it was pretty cool to see a mountain lake at over 11,000 feet sitting within mountain peaks around us.