In The Shadow of Longs Peak
Peaceful Valley To Park Creek
01 January 2006
New Year’s Day
What better way to spend new years day than skiing in the backcountry. Even if the skiing is not the best. Even if the wind howls and pushes you around. But the roads to the trailhead are dry and the sun is out, at least most of the time. And it is not too cold.
I was on-call yesterday for year end so getting up early was not an option. Our destination today: explore the Park Creek trail from Peaceful Valley.
The start of this trip is the Peaceful Valley / Camp Dick turn-off on the Peak to Peak Highway. Park. Parking is ample but observe the ‘No Parking’ sign at the gate. Normally, we gear up at the car though sometimes the road just beyond the gate is blown clear of snow so it might be worthwhile to carry your skis just a bit. Normal when we ski here, we go up the Middle St. Vrain trail instead of the road since it can be blown clear and icy for the mile to Camp Dick.
Today we take the road: Go around the gate, pass the Middle St. Vrain trailhead, cross the bridge and after a quarter mile or so is the Bunce School Road. We are pleased that it is snow covered. Not hero snow but adequate. We turn and head upward. I imagined this road to be quite steep but turns out it is now. Blue Extra is enough wax to grip and motor on up.
There are two switchbacks on this road. As we begin to approach the first, the snow thins drastically, turns to ice, then disappears altogether. We de-ski and continue up and around the switchback. Before long, the road is ski-able again. We re-ski and continue up to the next switchback. As we round the switchback, the landscape flattens out and we approach Park Creek and the before long we are in a mountain park. We bypass a bare spot then ski into some good snow again.
Soon we approach a junction in the road – county road 202 turns west. We actually were expecting a trail not a road – but we turn west and take the road anyway. If we are in the right place, we should soon cross a creek which we do. And we pass another junction, county road 203.
The snow is chewed up by jeep tracks – evidently we are not the only ones seeking fresh snow – and it doesn’t occur to me till way later that these ruts will make the return trip rather tricky.
We continue up the road, mostly skiing in the tracks often bypassing bare spots on the road. At this point, and for the first time, this route gets at least a passing grade as except for the switch-backs on the road we haven’t had to take our skis off.
Before long and after a few more detours around bare patches, we come to another junction, this one for 202-A. The map shows a cutoff and we decide that this must be it. It has lots of snow and no tire tracks so it beckons, even more enticing since continuing forward looks like we’d be carrying our skis before too long.
We turn onto road 202-A. This road is not particularly steep but before long we are back in another jeep track but we continue onward. We are in the trees and wind thru a pleasant pine forest. The trees are pretty close together so a foray off the road is not inviting. After a mile or so (and side-stepping a few more bare spots) we come to an open area. The road steepens here and I finally stop and put on my skins. Upward we go until the road runs out. We are now on a definite trail (trees branches have been trimmed to create a path); we continue to climb and find a piece of surveyors tape, our last marker.
Then we stop. The wind is howling. It would be nice to take a bearing and just head back to the road but that would mean a ski carry so we turn and retrace our steps. The tire ruts make things interesting but for the most part the trip back is a pleasant kick ‘n’ glide. At the junction we meet three jeeps trying to overcome a snow bank. We leave them and continue our glide back.
All told, this outing took 5 hours. Conditions were very windy but not cold.
Now, it would be interesting to explore this route from the Rock Creek end, which we did but I do not have any notes. We did not get very far do to having to break trail.