Grand Mesa: The Crag Crest (Almost) Backpacking

The snow made the hike borderline reckless. One of the most difficult trips I have done so far. Featuring: Shea Stricker, Mike Shaw and Adam Sussman, and Bear the dog.

After 6 hours of drive, Culver's, Chipotle and City Market, we met up with Adam at this nice dispersed camping spot. It was on the other side of Jumbo Lake campground. It was densely surrounded by aspen trees. It would have been even more beautiful in the fall. The only downside of this site was that a previous camper took a big dump not too far from the fire place...

The next morning, we drove to the Crag Crest Trailhead to get on the "most iconic trail" in Grand Mesa. Roughly 10miles, 1,500 ft. Should not be a problem.

The trail was covered by snow to start. We thought that only the shaded area were covered by snow....it ended up 90% of the trail to the top was covered by snow. A lot of post-holing. Post-holing is a miserable way to spend a winter hike. The term alludes to exactly what you might imagine: the vertical plunge of a fence post into the earth—a narrow, straight, and deep insertion into the earth (or into snow, in our scenario).

This was where everyone got their feet wet. I went deep into the freezing snow covered stream with my shoes on. I asked Shaw to cross it barefooted and it resulted in this classic photo. At the end of the trip, none of our feet stayed dry.

After getting out of the shaded area, the views were breathtaking. You could see multiple lakes and change of landscape from lush green forest to high dessert mountains. We got an awesome lunch spot here.

Right after lunch, we got to the most dangerous part of the trip. Several people had turned around. I was quite determined to finish it, so was Shea.

Once we got to the ridge, the risk exposure level went up tenfold. There were cornices along the edge and both sides of the ridge were easily couple hundred feet of drop. At least we were smart enough to know that we should not walk on the cornices.

The technical level went up even further as we had to go through this section. The narrowest part only had room for one foot to land on. We literally passed the dog Bear down from the top to the bottom. This picture shows Shea coming back up to participate in the "Bear the dog relay" exercise.

Thinking back, the amount of risk that we exposed ourselves to was borderline reckless. We had no rope or helmet. And we each had 40-50 lbs of backpack and a dog. Haha. This picture shows the view from the bottom of this climb. Shaw's legs were "doing the Elvis" (shaking). This was probably the top of the ridge.

After this exercise, we thought that the toughest part was over. Oh no.....there were more like this for two more miles. The voice of wisdom from Adam advised against going further. He had had a rough one - car getting stuck in the snow, carrying the dog to this far, and climbing shits like this.... I was also getting quite uncomfortable, mostly because of the snow. I simply do not trust standing on the snowy slope with no safety net and protection. We decided to turn around. I heard a sigh of relief within my brain.

I was glad that we all stayed alive.

My body also started to feel the exhaustion. I may have had too much weight on my backpack. I probably had 4-5 liters of water and other normal backpacking stuff. My waist was hurting and the leg muscles that I never knew I had were hurting as well. I could not wait to see the car.

After running around for 2 hours trying to find a camping spot, we went back to the old area, and found a better spot. We spent the rest of the evening giving each other shit and toasting our feet and shoes. We also tried to convinced Adam to buy Shaw's ukulele and some fancy camera. Good time.

We promised that we would come back and get the job done.

Post Trip Tips

• Only the Island Lake and Cottonwood campsites allow reservations. Others are first-come-first serve.

• The Grand Mesa Lodge is a decent place to stay in. But it does not sell 6 packs.

• There are dispersed camping across the road from Jumbo Lake. This area should be very pretty during Fall.

• Come back with fishing rod, bikes and kayak. Or you can rent them from Grand Mesa lodge.