Spring is showing in Boulder, daffodils in bloom and sandals and shorts all over the Perl Street Mall. Every ski resort in Colorado is closed, save one. And with the holiday season mostly past and snow starting to fade, children no longer dream of visiting the North Pole.
Oh but how I do dream of it, and here’s how it goes:
You see a landscape completely blanketed in snow, the air as well is full of white. The only dark shapes are the cliff bands and rock exposures that are too steep and sheer for the snow to stick. There is almost no-one else around, most would cringe at the idea of being out in weather like this. Then you hear the words uttered with reverence, “The North Pole is Open”.
Its usually closed most of the year. Conditions have to be just right, and at this time of year, that happens and hopefully happens often!
Ahhhh yes, thankfully this is not a dream, its ABasin, which has the peculiar aspect of being open longer and later than any other resort in CO with some of the steepest gnarliest runs being open only in late spring. The weather patterns change this time of year and upslope or North-East fronts run through and can leave massive amounts of snow on the East Face of ABasin where the North Pole can be found. Just the hike up is amazing. For those who know, its that time of year!

Was just browsing through photo’s from a trip to the Daintree last year. I found many of the warning signs funny, esp. the common sense ones like: “Do not feed the elderly or the disabled to the crocodiles”.

August 11th, 2009.

While on our two week loop of Southwest Colorado we planned three days around Buena Vista which sits at the foot of several Sawatch 14ers. The two big attractions to staying nearby were the natural hot springs and the peaks. The most well know hot springs are the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, which is a hot spring and spa resort that seems to lately be on the upswing. We also found that there are nearby cabins that have there own private hot springs at the “Antero Hot Springs” and we decided to stay there. Personally I find it much more relaxing to not have a lot of other folks around and having our own hot spring just outside our cabin was just fantastic and worth it.

Since there is a 4wd road up Baldwin gulch we took the short drive up to it to get a sense of what kind of condition it was in and take a guess at how long it would take us to get to where we wanted to hike from. With Anna being nine years old and my wife not having done any 14ers yet it seemed wise to try to drive up close and leave just the last mile and a half to climb up. So we guessed at 2 hours for the drive and 3 hours for the hike. The weather looked great for us to give it a shot and we decided to head out at a reasonable early time of 7am.

Getting there:
We drove west toward St. Elmo on Chaffee County Road 162 and another 10 miles on the dirt road to reach the signed Baldwin Gulch Jeep Road (also listed as the 277 Road).

You can park here, there are plenty of pull-offs along the road. This is the lower trailhead and its a long way from here. Short, high-clearance 4WD vehicles can drive up the 277 road, our stock 04 Jeep Liberty did fine. Above the river crossing (10,850′), there are dispersed camping spots along the side of the road as it leads to multiple switchbacks up to the saddle. We parked at the saddle and made our way up the ridge line to the top.

I took a chisel-peen hammer to prospect for Aquamarines and I think we actually did find some Garnets. It was a great trek for Chris and Anna to get on top of their first 14er with the added bonus of Gem-Hunting near the summit. If you want to see some of the nicest aquamarines found on Antero, stop at the “Rock Doc” back on US285. We picked up a few carats of Aquamarine there and they have nice examples of the things folks prospect for on Antero.