November 8, 2008

By Tim Briese

This hike in the Buffalo Peaks WA involves an eleven mile circuit going up the gentle Rich Creek Trail and returning on the Rough and Tumbling Creek Trail, in a nearly circular loop. I had done it once several years before and deemed it well worthwhile to return and do again.

I drove to the Rich Creek Trailhead along the graded Weston Pass Road southwest of Fairplay with my wife Teresa and lab Allie on a sunny morning in early November. At 7:40 we headed up the gradual trail to the west along Rich Creek in the chilly early morning air. There was at first a fair amount of snow on the north-facing trail, but we soon crossed to the sunny northwestern side of the creek where there was almost no snow. The trail gradually curved around to the south as we climbed into a broad, grassy valley, going past several beaver ponds along the way. I hoped to add an interesting twist to our adventure today by climbing to the crest of the ridge that lay above the valley to the west, in order to inspect the views of the Sawatch to the west beyond the Arkansas River Valley. With this objective in mind we left the trail at about 11,300 feet and made a fun bushwhack up grassy slopes to the southwest up through the last of the trees. On this climb we had a nice view of the Buffalo Peaks to the southeast. We reached the crest of the broad, grassy ridge at about 11,900 feet and were presented there with a splendid panorama of the Sawatch Range to the west. Although it was rather windy on the ridge we proceeded to hike south a half mile along its broad crest to the summit of Point 12,096. From this vantage point the views were even more expansive, with Mt. Oxford and the Clear Creek Valley directly across the Arkansas River Valley to the west, and Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive beyond Twin Lakes to the northwest. This bushwhack and ridge walk above timberline was the highlight of the hike for me today.

We nestled behind a pile of rocks on the summit out of the wind to enjoy our lunch in the bright November sunshine. Afterwards we bushwhacked to the southeast down grassy slopes back toward the valley, under the watchful gaze of the Buffalo Peaks. After skirting around a few large patches of snow and descending a few hundred feet we re-entered the timber and bushwhacked steeply down into the valley. We weaved our way around patches of willows and found the trail again on the far side of the valley, in the vicinity of a gentle 11,500 foot pass in the drainage. We turned to the right and followed the trail down a drainage to the southeast. After hiking about a mile and a half we came to a junction with the Tumbling Creek Trail, at about 11,100 feet, at the north end of an expansive grassy valley called Buffalo Meadows. We briefly considered hiking up the trail to the south on another sidetrip a couple of miles to Buffalo Pass, but decided against that because of the limited amount of daylight we had left today. Instead we continued on our loop and turned to the left and headed down the trail to the northeast. The trail went down a pleasant grassy valley for a while before abruptly dropping into a wooded canyon beside the cascading waters of Rough and Tumbling Creek. The entire character of the hike changed for a while, as we began to encounter patches of packed snow and ice in the shade of the dark woods and therefore had to watch our footing carefully. We came to a point where the trail crossed to the south side of the creek and met a lone backpacker sitting there on a rock filtering water out of the stream. He told us he was camped nearby and planned to be out here for the next three or four days. We discussed later how it would take a special type of person to relish camping alone for several days in the wilderness during the long, cold nights of November.

After a while we reached another trail junction and continued to the left on the Tumble Creek Trail. We hiked down a pleasant marshy valley with beaver ponds where we had a fine view of the Buffalo Peaks behind us to the south. Soon the trail climbed to the northwest a few hundred feet up over a ridge and gradually took us back down to the trailhead, where we arrived shortly after 4 p.m. We hiked about 13 miles today and climbed 2500 feet of elevation gain, including our sidetrip to the Point. I had forgotten since my last visit just how rewarding this hike is, especially with our climb up to the ridge today, and was glad we had chosen to do it.

Back to Home Page.