RMNP - Macgreagor Falls - abort

RMNP - Macgreagor Falls - abort

Today was forecast to be warm, but windy.  Highs would be around 55, but the wind would blow about 25-30 mph.  All in all a good day for a hike.  I decided to head up to RMNP to see if I could find McGraw Falls.  McGraw Falls are on Black Canyon Creek, near Lumpy Ridge.  I hit the Black Canyon Trail about 9a at the Lumpy Ridge Trailhead with the trail and ice still solid from the night freeze.  That would certainly change in the next couple of hours.

A view of the mountains of RMNP

I had come down the Black Canyon Trail early last year when I hiked the loop from the Lumpy Ridge Trailhead to Bridal Veil Falls, so I sort of knew what to expect on that part of the trail.  Depending on what map you look at there may or may not be an 'official' trail to McGraw Falls.  I wanted to be careful because the trail crosses a lot of private property and I didn't want to be somewhere I shouldn't be.  Land owners can be grumpy sometimes.

Black Canyon Trail

It looks like from the map I used that there were several places I could exit the Black Canyon Trail and connect to the McGraw Falls Trail.  The first junction turned out to be a ranch road that went into the valley and back up, so I skipped that and stayed on Black Canyon.  The next trail junction was also part of the Pear Climbing area junction.  Lumpy ridge has a number of rock climbing areas, Pear is one of those.  There are many others,  I think the most spectacular is Twin Owls.

Twin Owls (1)

Twin Owls (2)

At the Pear junction there was no obvious trail to go with to McGraw Falls, so I headed a bit cross country expecting to soon find a trail or ranch road of some sort.  I knew I was on private property, but I could see the RMNP boundary fence so I thought that would be close enough.  Sure enough, within a few hundred yards I encountered an unused ranch road that would lead me closer to where I wanted to go.  I soon reentered RMNP where a "McGraw Falls Trail" sign greeted me.  Ah!  On the 'official' track now.  There was also a sign informing me to be careful because of trail and creekbed damage from the 2013 floods.  Hmm, seen those before.

Clearly this trail has not been maintained in quite a while.  In several places trees had fallen across the trail which required minor detours and once in a while the trail would disappear.  At one point it was clear that part of the trail had been washed away by the flooding creek.  I eventually came to an area where the creek had severely washed away the surrounding hillside.  There was plenty of snow and some exposed areas.  I decided that rather and try to cross all that with snow cover, I would abort this objective and come back when there was no snow.  On my return, in order to stay in the Park, I bushwhacked back up to the Black Canyon Trail.  The hike was not really long enough but I wasn't motivated to tackle another four miles so I called it an early day and headed home.

Lumpy Ridge is a unique formation in RMNP.  Here are a few pictures.

Lumpy Ridge (1)

Lumpy Ridge 92)

Overall Track Statistics for RMNP - McGraw Falls abort,    974 data points

 Length 6.171 miles  :  Garmin Length 6.554 miles

 Start Elevation - 7852.36 feet

 Maximum Elevation - 8131.99 feet

 Minimum Elevation - 7754.69 feet

 Date of Hike - Feb 10, 2016

 Start Time - 08:52 AM

 End Time - 11:54 AM

 Total Duration -     3:01 hours:min

 Total Ascent - 1524.34 feet

 Total Descent - 1527.95 feet

 Net Ascent - -3.61 feet

 Maximum Grade - 21.72%

 Average Speed -  2.03 mph :  Garmin Average Speed  2.15 mph

 Maximum Ascent over Mile - 365.32 feet

 Maximum Speed over Mile -  2.80 mph

 Maximum Gain over Mile (%) -  4.93%