About a week or two ago, I (Daniel) went backpacking with my dad and another fellow we knew from Kingwood. We were all from 3 different cities: Fort Worth (~700 ft above sea level), Oklahoma City (~1300), and Kingwood (~50 ft). We all ended up flying separately into Durango, CO(6500 ft) on Tuesday, August 19. We spent the night at a KOA campground in a barebones cabin and headed out the next morning to catch the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge train. 
We left at 9am and got off at 11:30 or so in Needleton (a mining camp back in the old days), which is about halfway between Durango and Silverton. Starting elevation was 8160 ft.
We left at 9am and got off at 11:30 or so in Needleton (a mining camp back in the old days), which is about halfway between Durango and Silverton. Starting elevation was 8160 ft.
We hiked 6 miles or so into the Weminuche Wilderness and set up base camp in Chicago Basin at about 11,100 feet above sea level. We camped in the trees in the bottom right of the photo below.
And got to wake up in this Idyllic paradise.
We got up Thursday morning at 4:30am so we could get a nice early start. Our plans were to do as many of the 4 peaks that we could. We started out hiking up to Twin Lakes area.
Twin Lakes is a beautiful area where the trails split for Mt. Eolus one way and Windom and Sunlight the other way.
Unfortunately, once we got to Twin Lakes we had a few hiccups in our plans. My dad had a nasty spill jumping over a creek and ended up cutting his face up pretty good and breaking his nose in the process.
Luckily we had some first aid kits with us. I gave him my hankerchief which he filled up with blood a good three for four times. He'd fill it up with blood, and then I'd go rinse it out in the cold stream water and give it back. Luckily the water was clean and clear. I'm pretty sure the near freezing water helped to slow the flow of blood as well. As anyone close to me knows, I don't do very well with seeing blood, other than my own. I can be bleeding all over the place and not worry about it, but once I see someone get a papercut I get lightheaded. It was all I could do to patch him up without fainting myself. I had him wipe his face with an alcohol wipe and then we threw on some butterfly bandages and some other bandaids where we could put them. On the patches that a bandaid wouldn't work, I just covered the cuts in anti-bacterial ointment.
It took about an hour or so until we got back up and got moving. Dad was a trooper. I know he knew best how he felt, but I can't say I wasn't in a little bit of shock when he was the one pushing for us to keep going instead of turning around and heading down. It may have also helped that we didn't have a mirror and he couldn't see how bad the cuts really were. Whether it was smart or not, we headed our way towards Mt. Eolus.
It was pretty quiet hiking as Rich and I made sure my Dad was in between us and was doing all right. We made it up to the catwalk area and made the quick climb to North Eolus (a sub peak of Mt. Eolus). From there it gave us a good view of the catwalk, the narrow ridge to Mt. Eolus with a 2000ft drop on one side and a several hundred foot drop on the other. Look at the pictures below to get a true scale of how large it is. You can see people climbing in the bottom left of the first photo below.
I have to say, while I'm not very scared of heights, the catwalk freaked me out a little bit. Once I was on and realized it was a little wider than I thought, I was ok. The hard part was getting over the initial fear of... "I have to climb across THAT!?!?"...
We made it across the catwalk and up the near vertical face without any other problems. There were a few times that I would look down at some inappropriate times and think, "holy cow that's a long way down" but hopefully it didn't show. Here we are sitting at the top at an elevation of 14,083 feet. In little over 36 hours, we went from sea level to 14,000 ft. It's really amazing to see how thin and crisp the air is up there. You can take all the deep breaths you can and it just doesn't do any good.
Here I am taking a few minutes to just check out the miles and miles of mountains and wilderness around me.
We made it back down ok, but decided with the hour lost and my dad not at 100%, we wouldn't try to attempt the other two mountains that day. On our way down, I started having trouble with my knee. About three years ago I tore off some cartilage in my knee that's still floating around. The uphill wasn't bad, but the constant pounding of downhill started to hurt. By the end, I was hobbling down like an old man.
Well, that the end of the first day. I'm getting tired of typing so I'll wrap up the other two days in one paragraph. The second day, Dad and Rich went and did Sunlight Peak while I went my own way. I didn't think my knee could handle the beating again and then be able to hike back out the next day with a 40lb pack. I did some hiking in the basin and had a lot of fun. On Saturday, we hiked back down to the trailhead and caught the train back home. We cleaned up and at a great restaurant called "Serious Texas Barbeque" that actually lived up to its name.
Over all, it was a ton of fun and I totally want to do something like it again next year Dad. I'll just make sure I bring a knee brace with me!
