Our Non-Camping Trip

One of the greatest things about Caleb working 12 hour shifts is sometimes he has a few days off in a row anywhere from 1-6 days. This past weekend was 4 nights off. Thursday-Sunday nights. We planned to go camp and we were both uber-excited! We love to HIKE and we love to CAMP. So Caleb wanted me to try backpacking because that is hiking and camping combined. Here is the story about our Non-backpacking experience.

 It was going to get down into the 20s at night, but we were ready! 

We packed up our backpacks. Had our 20 degree rating sleeping bags. Had warm layers of clothes.

Hats, Scarves, Gloves, Hand Warmers, and even Sleeping Bag Warmers.

We were ready for the cold and excited.

Caleb even made homemade beef jerky for our camping. It was a 24 hour process from start to finish to make. It was worth it because his beef jerky was tastier than the store-bought kind. And cheaper than buying bagged beef jerky. 

We were NOT ready for the snow. ahahahahaha man did we have a good laugh on the drive out there. We left Colorado Springs at elevation 6,035 feet where there was no snow. As we drove and came to Woodland Park at 8,465 feet above sea level we noticed large banks of snow on the sides of the roads. As we continued to climb in elevation past Woodland Park we noticed the mountainsides covered in snow. And I mean covered. We were being very optimistic because some of the East side facing slopes had patches of grass where the sun melted the snow. We thought maybe we could still have a dry area to camp.

We made it to Divide, CO at 9,165 feet above sea level and made our left turn to head up towards the backside of Pikes Peak where we were going to camp one ridge over. Snow was still covering the ground mostly, but we kept noticing east facing areas where the snow had melted. Well, we got to where we wanted to camp.

Great lean-to someone had built off the hiking trail we originally planned to backpack off. We found this when we had hiked in the area just a week earlier. NOTICE: no snow a week earlier in the same spot.

We hiked up about a half mile where we knew one backpacking site was. There were some spots east facing and the snow had melted but the ground was very wet. We figured we could make it work. We hike back down to the car, strap on our backpacks (which were a lot heavier than we anticipated). 

*Remember this was my first attempt at backpacking*

We are started hiking up and I looked at Caleb and said hesitantly, "My back hurts." Now I wasn't just being a wimp. I had shooting pains across my shoulder blades and throughout my lower back. Caleb adjusted my pack so it sat on me better and tightened the straps. That helped, but my back was still hurting after walking a little more. I said "okay let's just do this. I can make it for now to that first dry spot to camp." We walked a little more and Caleb slowly turned to me and said, "My back is hurting too." We both said we'd suck it up and keep on going. We hiked a few more minutes, and then looked at each other and had the same thought. "This isn't worth it." We turned around and started hiking back down just laughing at how hesitant and indecisive both of us were. 

Caleb is always the one to challenge me and push me to try new things, which I love, but this time I was so thankful we both felt the same way about this venture. We got back in the car still laughing at each other about how excited we were to go camping and tough out the freezing cold together in the mountains, and here we were changing our minds after all of this planning, driving, and hiking. We agreed that we'd still camp out that night if we could just find a camp site we didn't have to backpack too and wasn't covered in snow.

Checked out Mueller State Park which was just 5 minutes from where we attempted to backpack. The campground tent sites were all closed there still for winter months. We then decided to head back down to Colorado Springs and get on Old Stage Road. 

This is a side road off Old Stage Road on the west side of Colorado Springs.

Old Stage Road is a dirt mountain road that winds up from Cheyenne Mountain and you can take it all the way to Victor/Cripple Creek. We had been up there a couple times and knew there were some primitive tent sites back in the woods. We drove slowly gaining elevation and about 45 minutes later made it to here. The picture ^ above ^ is looking at the trail that goes off the road and up to the tent sites. Our car was not going to make it in that snow. We parked and walked up as far as you can see in this picture. The tire tracks stopped and there were no tracks up to the tent sites. We figured since no one else had been up in there we weren't going to go either.

Our backpacking did not work as planned and we didn't find any place we could camp without snow, but we sure did have an adventurous time together.

I feel that backpacking probably is not for me. Wasn't a big fan of carrying that weight on my back. Even if I was able to get my pack weight down a lot, which I definitely could do especially for summer backpacking, I still just don't think I'd enjoy backpacking. We may try it again some time, but for now we're all excited about planning on when we can go camping soon. We want to come back to the tent sites that are off Old Stage Road and camp as well as checking out many other places in Colorado. Let us know where you favorite place is to camp in Colorado!