Copper Lake , Crested Butte

I've always heard that Crested Butte is a beautiful place, but I had never actually been there until last weekend. Christine and I took Friday off to go backpacking to Copper Lake.

We didn't dilly dally around Fort Collins in the morning, but we still didn't get to start hiking until 5PM. We figured we'd just hike until we felt like stopping and not try to push ourselves to the lake, but it turns out that the hike wasn't too hard and we ended up getting to the lake with enough time to setup our camp and cook dinner before it got dark. It was a clear night and we sat outside after dinner and watched for shooting stars from the Leonid shower. I was glad I decided to pack some warm stuff, because it was chilly. Christine took full enjoyment of the down jacket, and we both enjoyed zipping our sleeping bags together for the cool night.

The next morning we woke up early and hiked up to Maroon Pass. It was a short easy hike and once we got there we decided to wander around. We hiked up some unnamed point and got a great view of the valley on either side of the pass. In one direction the valley leads to Crested Butte. In the other direction, the valley leads to Aspen. Beautiful.

We returned to camp and I strung up my fly rod while Christine read next to the lake. I was only getting bites from small fish for a while, but eventually I tied something on that looked tasty to a bigger fish. This time we wrapped it in foil and baked it on the coals of a fire (in addition to a baked potatoe). It was decent, but I'll have to do some experimenting with the flavors.

Of the campsites we've had this year, this one was my favorite. It was well away from the other spots, we had a great view, and a stream nearby that provided water and some nice sounds. I also think we hit the nail on the head with our food this time. We had a good ammount of food without being really bulky. We also tried some new meals that worked out well. On Friday night we each had some Indian vegetables with some chicken mixed in. It was really simple, didn't take much time to prepare, and required very little dish washing. On Saturday we made chicken curry from a home recipe that we adapted.





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