Anniversary Hike

One year ago tomorrow Hike Club met for the first time. It was a disaster. Being the first hike i planned, i learned a lot. I trusted a hiking site that was just wrong. Much like Wikipedia, it's driven by users and someone added a GPS track from a hike that was vastly different than the one that was described. I had no idea how wrong it could be. The description said 3 miles. However the route we followed was about 7 miles. Thinking it would only take us about an hour i planned to start at 1 pm, which became almost 2 pm in reality. We were hiking up the hog back two miles from the cars and seeing the sun set, then climbing more and watching the sun set again.

Today six brave souls, intended to recreate the original Hike Club hike. Of the 6, two were on their first Hike Club hike, and one on her second. Since i've learned from my mistakes and have been planning hikes for a year now, we started at 10 am. The beginning of the trail was muddy and slushy but we made our way across a ton of packed snow up the Morrison Slide trail to some amazing vistas. As we left the Matthew Winters park into Red Rocks we came across a friend. Bryce is part of Hike Club, but showed up 40 minutes late and based on where we parked he picked the wrong way round the track i posted on facebook. Again a logical fallacy based on that bad intel from the dreaded incorrect hiking site from a year ago. He was making good time trying to catch up with us, but we were going the other direction. Bryce did the 7 miles in about two hours and meet us for drinks and food after.  Maybe next time we'll hike together. Bryce also told us about a trail detour on our planned route.
I had a suspicion that the road bridge we were going to cross was the obstacle that had prompted closing the trails. But being a bad ass i decided that we should take the closed trail and see what we can make of the probable water crossing. As we reached the road and could see the construction site where there used to be a bridge that we needed to cross, which i'm sure was damaged in the flooding this summer, Evan burst out laughing. Saying it was a typical Hike Club blunder, I'm sure he was thinking we were going to have to turn around and take the detour I had opted against. He also said we were really recreating the original hike by completely underestimating the time necessary to complete the hike. I reasurred everyone and suggesteed we go take a look. Once I entered the construction site, i knew i was right, the stream was only a few inches deep. And the crew had built a small foot bridge, it was not a serious obstacle. I'm sure they set up the detour to keep hikers out of the construction zone, we were just to bold/stupid for that.

Then we climbed the hog back, we took your time, we admired the scenery, we looked back on the trail we had taken to get there. The last time we hiked this route, It was our first hike in months and Karen was gassed. The route we took over the top of the hog back is the literal definition of false summits. Last year 5+ miles into a 3 mile hike Karen was exceedingly more vocal about the difficulty of the task we had set out on. One nameless hiker had been trying to lift her spirits by saying "it's all down hill from here." When in fact it was not and he had no idea what he was talking about, ever. Which only angered poor Karen. Since then we have always joked on hikes using that blatantly incorrect statement to lighten spirits when the going was tough. If you drive south on C-470 from I-70 and look to the west you'll see the ridge we were following to the north. You may notice that there is a saddle or low spot in the ridge. Last year when we could see the saddle and had realized how much climb was left in the hike Karen broke down. She looked at me and said "I can't do that." I gave her a sympathetic look and said to the love of my life "Baby, you don;t have a choice." She took it like a champ, climbed the hill and we made it back to the cars. One of the newbies on this hike Ange, is a hardcore rock star! She was a literal analog of Karen one year earlier but she beat all those stupid false summits and finished like a champ! We got back to the cars just under five hours later at 6.8 miles. This was no beginner hike, and our newbies did awesome.
All things considered it was a great hike. I've been thinking about doing this hike for Hike Club's anniversary for months and it came off like gang busters. Today i am very proud of my accomplishments and everyone who has hiked with us.
I had a thought on one hike last year about taking a series of pictures and turning them into a Gif as people move through the shot. Here are two from today:
https://imgflip.com/gif/6ypab#BBl3Kwx1MbAUVPa6.01
https://imgflip.com/gif/6yph9#PfHj3dpLBxdtSrp2.01
As always there are a ton more pics of the Hike Club Facebook group. If you're not in Hike Club let me know we'll get you signed up.
Nate