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San Isabel Forest, Colorado
August - September, 2025

Our trip to the wilds was seriously hindered by the altitude. I never even thought about it, I’ve been visiting this part of Colorado since I was 10 years old. Perhaps it’s age, but suddenly anything over 10,000 feet had us WIPED OUT. It was so unexpected! And it’s not as easy as re-thinking which trails to take, since almost all of them go straight up and all of them start at 9,000-10,000 feet. Even if we really pushed ourselves, we would never have made it more than half-way up the trails we wanted to hike. Lungs are lungs, and we’re about as sea level as it gets.

Nonetheless, we were able to enjoy spending weeks in the San Isabel forest. Very relaxing, very different than what we’re used to. Dry, sparse, the clouds so noticeably close! Definitely LOTS people around :( But no fire restrictions, even though there was a small contained forest fire where we spent our second week.

Pass Creek

august 26-27

We spent the first few days a mile from the Pass Creek trailhead next to a meadow surrounded by HUGE mountains on every side. There were thunder and lightning storms the first day and night which was exciting but scary. The road up to the trailhead was the scariest road I have ever driven. I don’t even know why I didn’t turn back after the first hundred yards. But something kept this thrill-seeker going, and in the end it was soooo worth it - my favorite days of the whole trip. I probably won’t do that again, but the Jeep Compass we rented was AMAZING and helps me realize some cars are just built for rocky roads. This video doesn’t do it justice because it was stabilized- look at the windshield to get a sense of the bumpiness. Yikes:

Tent hidden amongst the trees. Secret hideout haha.

View from inside our camp.

Someone was practicing bushcraft and built 2 structures in the trees. These will likely make it into my next painting series.

Giant bonzes by the fire pit. Maybe a big deer or a small moose?

Gorgeous 360 degree views from the meadow.

One of the best sunsets ever. A family of antelope pranced by us and ran over the edge of the meadow. Magical.

After failing to get to the trailhead the next day, we just explored the whole area around our camp. Solitude :)

Browns Creek Trail

august 28-29

Sadly, we had to leave the Pass Creek campsite because we just couldn’t make it to the trailhead 2 days in a row. So we switched plans and headed for the other side of the mountain to do the Browns Creek trail. We stayed the night on Forest Road 272, which had huge, well spaced sites and the trailhead was just at the end of the road.

I had a lot of fun taking photos for my next series :)

Sunset the night we stayed here - that’s a glowing cloud!

We took a trial run the next day to see if we could make it all the way up the trail for backcountry camping. We made it! There were crazy trees all over this trail.

Soooo hard to breathe :(

This is when we found our perfect meadow spot for the next day’s backcountry hike.

The falls!

Drinking waterfall water from a life straw haha.

It was so interesting to see the other side of the mountain we were just camped out on.

A rainbow greeting us the morning we left for our backcountry hike!

This little woodpecker (sapsucker?) was tapping at this tree the whole time we were there. Such a peaceful sound.

Ptarmigan!

Setting up camp…

A nice fire to accompany the bone-chilling screams we just heard. A few backpackers went down the trail next to our camp, and about 15 minutes after we saw them, one of them SCREAMED. And then SCREAMED again. It was obvious she was trying to scare away a bear (or moose?) and not actually hurt. The sound of someone possibly scaring a bear into the direction of where I will sleep the night is mind bendingly terrifying.

Our bear bag doesn’t have to be hung, it’s made of a material bears can’t get through. But rodents can! We got lucky this time.

Our water source. With every kind of scat you can think of in the brush… Bear, moose, deer. Yikes. Creeped me out, especially after the screaming lady.

Here comes the rain again…

It rained all night and I was FREEZING and dehydrated. The walk back was a bit difficult but so beautiful.

Halfway stop in Buena Vista

august 30

We stayed at an AWESOME hotel in Buena Vista for showering and fresh food feeding. It had olde timey decor, and I was struck by the antler trophy hanging on the headboard of the bed. It had my dad’s initials painted on it! I took that as a good sign :)

Forest Road 110

august 31-september 4

After a night of showers and fresh food in Buena Vista, we headed to the highest mountains in the lower 48. Unfortunately we were still not acclimated to the elevation, so our plans of doing a 3-day backcountry hike were scrapped. We ended up camping out on the Forest Road next to the trailheads for most of the week . WE COULDN’T BREATHE, PEOPLE. The sites on the side of the road were HUGE and beautiful, but since it was Labor Day weekend, everyone in Colorado seemed to come out for camping on the same road. It’s free and gorgeous, so I don’t blame anyone. But it SUCKED because there were cars going down the road every 15 minutes. Luckily the sites are so big you couldn’t hear anyone. Unless they were driving. Which they were. Every day, all night long. We’re used to being the only ones in dispersed camping roads, but Colorado is a different place than we’re used to. So many people :(

The site we were in had 3 levels! That were hard to go up and down, but we managed. Road level for cooking and eating, second level for sleeping and fire ring, 3rd level for pure exploring.

View of the first level from the 2nd level - you can just make out the car behind the trees.

Hill up to the top level.

Second level viewed from the top (exploring) level.

Exploring level. It went on and on.

HUGE boulders!

Starting a fire with a ferro rod.

The unending task of gathering water from the river and filtering it. Imagine if every time you needed to use water you had to scoop it from a river, lake, or creek into a bottle and then squeeze it through a filter into another bottle. Makes me really appreciate running water. And Aaron for always being the water guy :)

Our trusty and tight cooking system. Just a pot, a teeny stove, and a small can of propane. This gas canister lasted us 2 weeks! And provided the hot water for all of our meals.

We attempted a trial run of the Mt. Massive trail so we could measure our ability for a backcountry hike, but only got a mile in because of the elevation. Amazing views of 14,000 foot mountains though.

The forest floor was much like the Browns Creek forest… strangely laden with toppled trees and very little growing on the ground. Like a game of pick-up-sticks. SO DIFFERENT than the untamed tangle of the Pacific Northwest!

Gathering water in Halfmoon Creek with its copper rocks.

We started exploring all of the empty campsites, and this one was AWESOME. Had the river to itself, a wild one! Enough to explore the whole day.

Deer!

Eerily quiet.

While exploring next to the creek, I saw 2 paw (or hoof?) prints right at the edge of the water. I wasn’t sure what kind of animal it was until I looked closer and saw CLAW MARKS coming from the center of the print. A mountain lion! SCARY!

One day we spent the whole day at Emerald Lake, just a walk from our campsite. We had the whole place to ourselves.

Sweet chipmunks everywhere :)

Not our most adventurous trip, but I learned a lot. Elevation matters. No more above tree-line mountain trips. Colorado has too many people haha. It was a great inspiration for my next series. I didn’t think so at the time, but I do now. I have many ideas - more internal, less figurative. Inspiration is a fickle bitch, bitches. HA!