This weekend, Rocco and I had quite the adventure. We drove up to Silverton, and then to Animas Forks. Here, we ditched the truck, not only because the roads from this point turn to 4WD, but also because we had different plans in mind. Rocco strapped on his doggy pack, and I mounted my bikepacking steed. We crested Cinnamon pass then dropped down to Grizzly Gulch whereupon we devoured some raw fish and trail mix before making camp for the night. I would have preferred cooked fish, but a burn ban is in effect, a didn’t have room to bring a cooker, and plan B to ask a fellow camper if I could borrow their stove failed too, so alas, raw salmon it was! Darkness soon followed and we hit the sack under my new spiffy ultralight tarp tent.

At dawn twilight, we awoke to brisk temps and began our ascent via foot to Redcloud Peak 14,034′.
After taking in the views, we began the traverse south to Sunshine Peak 14,001. The rock scramble was harder than it looked over from Redcloud, but we conquered nonetheless.  The primitive map we had in possession indicated some trails heading off from here to make a loop out of this hike rather than an out and back. After much deliberation with some other hikers on the summit, we finally found said trails and began a sketchy Class 3 descent down loose scree. After a good 40 minutes of this mess, things mellowed out into an ok trail that took us back down to treeline and back to Silver Creek for a 2 mile descent back to our campground.

Exhausted from our hike of 2 fourteeneers and a knarly descent, not to mention the ride from the evening before, Rocco and I decided to nap for a while before hitting the road back up to Cinnamon pass. This  sounded good in theory, but in practice, the place was swarming with tons of annoying flies, and we may have got 5 good minutes of rest in. It would have to do. After packing camp back into the bike bags and doggy pack, we began the long arduous climb back up to Cinnamon. The efforts of the day were definitely felt, and we had to break often. About a 1/2 mile from the summit during a particularly long moment of reflection, a Jeep rolled by, and its occupants, sensing our fatigue, offered some juice and peanut butter crackers, which we gladly accepted. It was exactly what we needed to get to the top.

I was fine once we reached the top, but poor Rocco, he struggled to keep up on the descent even though I rode my brakes hard all the way down. We finally made it back to Animas Forks and Rocco layed in the ice cold headwaters of the Animas for a good five minutes while I loaded up the truck. We cruised back to Silverton, got some ice cream, and enjoyed the drive back to Durango. Another fine mountain adventure in the books. It was my first time to try out my backpacking gear and it worked awesome! Really looking forward to some bikepacking trips in the future. Rocco reports that the doggy pack gave him a little rub burn on the belly, but otherwise, he was happy to carry to chip in and carry his weight for a change.