Brian’s Microblog

July 29, 2026

It rained and sometimes poured from 10:15 to 11:15 with a light show and sound effects. Because we had chosen an established campsite there was bare dirt all around the tent. With how hard it rained that dirt quickly became mud puddles that started splashing mud onto and a little bit into the tent. I moved some things around to try to mitigate it. It was very unpleasant but the tent did its job - despite puddles all around, water never came up from the floor and I don’t think the roof leaked, but the splashing made it hard to tell.

When we got up a bit before 6:00 almost everything we had that was not in a watertight bag was wet or damp, and a lot of it was muddy or at least dirty. We rinsed a few things off in the creek. Our neighbors left around 7:00 and we got on trail a little bit before 8:00.

The Cascade Creek valley was very pretty both the evening before and in the morning, but the lighting and angles never made for great photos.

We crossed the creek and climbed up out of that valley and followed a ridge across a few more creeks. Eventually we climbed up to a saddle and entered the valley where Bolam Pass and Hermosa Park are, and our first glimpse of Lizardhead Peak.

We had driven up a jeep road a couple years ago and hiked a few miles of the Colorado Trail below Hermosa Peak. We hiked across the wide valley and up to the base of Hermosa Peak and had lunch in the same spot where we had talked to a Colorado Trail hiker on that trip. The next day we had hiked up to the base of Lizardhead Peak and got some memorable views.

We continued around Hermosa Peak and then around a couple of red rock peaks. We stopped at the top of the valley formed by Silver Creek and filtered water. There was a fairly nice campsite there and the clouds were looking threatening off and on. Eventually we decided to go ahead and climb over Blackhawk Pass to the Straight Creek valley.

We found a number of the campsites taken. The trail crosses Straight Creek twice and a tributary as it climbs out of the canyon, but that is the last listed water source for over twelve miles, so this canyon is a very popular camp area.

We eventually chose a somewhat sloped site that looked like it might have been used before. We set the tent up and left it empty so the wet interior could dry for well over an hour. It turned out there was a tiny brook nearby so I was able to do some laundry while Julie made dinner. This time we tried Butternut Dahl curry from Peak and it was pretty good.

We filtered more water to get a head start on tomorrow’s load and then set up our sleeping bags.

14.2 miles over nine and a half hours.