[Wheeler-Gore Trail, Wheeler Junction, Colorado, March 11, 2018]. The snow tapered off during the night and the morning is partly sunny. Dallas and I drive to the Wheeler Flats exit on Interstate 70 west of Frisco Colorado and head up the Wheeler-Gore Trail. We tried this trail once before, back in January 2015, but didn’t get very far. Today, we feel energetic and hope to reach Wheeler Lake, about three miles away. The trailhead is right beside the Interstate and commands a nice view of the sub-vertical flank of Mount Royal, which hovers over us. Wearing snowshoes, we follow a telemark track steeply uphill, hoping that it will join the main trail, the lower part of which is untrodden and rather deep in snow. It turns too far to the east, so we traverse west across snowfields and through a little grove of Aspen, finally picking up the trail by the edge of a ravine. It has not been broken since the snowfall, but is still much easier to traverse than the snowfield. We head up and up, getting good view of the Copper Mountain Ski Area, across the Interstate from us, and of the Tenmile Range behind it. The trail winds p through evergreen woods, all of it very pretty. We finally pass the Eagle’s New Wilderness Boundary sign. Looking at the map, we realize that we have not made as much progress as we had hoped; we will not reach Wheeler Lake today. Still, we push onward for another hour or more, until we come to a wide open meadow that I guess must be a marsh. It is covered with smooth snow, crossed by a few animal tracks, and its edges have beautiful rolling snow-hills leading up to tall evergreens. Across the meadow in the far-east I can see another mountain with a sharp cornice of snow. I believe that it is Wingle Ridge. Dallas rests in the sun on a snowless, needle-strewn patch of ground beneath a large tree, but I continue on the trail for a bit. It is not much traveled past the meadow and very hard to keep to. I go as far as a small clearing and then turn back. On this hike, neither Dallas nor I spotted any animals, except for a few of the most common birds, but we encountered many tracks ranging in size from tiny mouse prints to elk. This area around the meadow has many. I join Dallas at her resting spot and we enjoy the sunshine for a while, gazing at the snow fields, our eyes following the long, late afternoon shadows of the trees. We then head back. The downhill is fast and easy. We take the trail all the way back to the trailhead, passing by our morning’s detour. The unbroken part of the trail as it parallels the Interstate is tough going. As sundog appears in the sky, just as we reach the trailhead.

We stop briefly at a parking lot at the north end of a road that parallels North Tenmile Creek in Wheeler Junction. I walk along a ski trail for a few hundred yards, crossing the creek via a pedestrian bridge. The creek and the surrounding mountains are very beautiful.

About five and a half hours.