It’s been quiet on our blog for the past couple of years, but please know that Em and Pie have still been adventuring as much as ever behind the scenes! My blog has been inching closer and closer to the storage limit with all the many photos I love to add to the blogs, and it’s been tough deciding whether I upgrade to the next level plan that costs significantly more or if I should just start deleting older blog posts. As a story teller, it breaks my heart to have to erase old stories, so instead I’ve just neglected my blog altogether. No resolution has been achieved, but I digress….

Our most favorite adventure this year was a backpacking one along Chute Creek near Durango over our 12th wedding anniversary in August…and of course we brought our teeny weens, Panini and Canoe, because…well, we didn’t want to be up Chute Creek, without a Canoe!

We had done this hike twice before, once in the summer as a day-hike with our senior weens. And another time in the winter, as a regrettable (long!!!) day-hike as well. We decided to approach this trail from a different starting point this time that didn’t necessarily require it to be a day-hike, but we chose to do it as an overnight backpacking hike so we would have the option to explore more of the terrain and hopefully find an epic waterfall we knew existed on the trail that we had failed to find both times in the past.

The trail started off on a literal “high” with incredible views of the peaks across the valley we were about to descend into. It was nice starting off the trail as an easy descent, but we knew we’d probably be cursing the ground we walked on later when we had to do our return trip/ascent back up the valley.

It was fun to start our hike off with a nice surprise of bear scat on the trail (please…don’t come at me for my choice in “hiking boots” haha!… if you know me well, you’ll know I’m obsessed with hiking in sandals, especially when I know it’s going to be a hike with lots of water crossings). We did come prepared by packing our food in a bear vault that was in my backpack, but luckily, we never ended up encountering bears on our backpacking adventure. We did however get attacked by something else that I will talk about later in our recap.

The very first waterfall we came to was an absolute stunner! While somewhat unimpressive in height, it more than made up for it with its picturesque mountain backdrop behind it, walls of lush green foliage draped around it, and sea of turquoise blue in front of it. Unless you saw it with your own eyes, you’d never believe these waterfalls even exist in the middle of Colorado.

We backtracked on the trail a bit to visit a completely different waterfall that poured out from a small canyon above and onto deep red soil. It was quite obvious to see why these falls were named Chute Creek Falls.

Just a few feet away from this deep red waterfall was another waterfall that cascaded down a gentle 100-foot slope. To visit the bottom of this waterfall would have been nearly impossible without ropes, so we admired its beauty from the edge of a cliff above and moved on.

After our quick detour to visit these two waterfalls, we retreated back to the direction we originally came and continued our search for more waterfalls along Chute Creek. We very much remembered each of the vast open meadows from the previous time we did this hike in the month of December. In the summer, these meadows are a welcome sight of flat, easy terrain surrounded by 360 degree views of mountains patterned with perfect rows of pine trees. In the winter, the openness of these meadows invites snow to blanket the ground in endless layers that remain mostly untouched until a determined snowshoer comes along daring to trudge through the thigh-deep snow. We’d much prefer the summer version.

Eventually, we found our way to the elusive “main event” waterfall that we had searched for twice before and failed at finding. Even with the additional information we had to try to find it this time, we still had a difficult time locating it. The hike down to it was hidden and so steep that it didn’t even look like the right way (or a safe way) to go. We were glad we didn’t give up finding it though. What an unbelievable sight!

Although we didn’t want to ever leave that incredible waterfall, it was already getting late in the day because of the late time we had started the hike. We found a flat campsite not far away tucked away in the trees. It was nothing to write home about as the tress obscured the surrounding views, but it was mere steps away from more turquoise blue waterfalls.

On the second day, we backtracked to the “main event” waterfall we saw on the first day because we couldn’t get enough! We had camped only a mile away from it, so it wasn’t a big deal to go back to it and then continue on the other way.

Eventually we had peel ourselves away from the waterfall, as we had at least one more chute-shaped blue waterfall on the agenda for the day before continuing on in unknown territory.

We knew there possibly were more waterfalls beyond this last blue waterfall, but during previous hikes, it would have been impossible to do further exploring in a day-trip. More importantly, the trail beyond the last blue waterfall was faint, at best, for the first quarter of a mile, and non-existent after that.

We stumbled upon another insanely tall waterfall cascading down a cliff surrounded by white-washed rock, yet another sight we’ve never seen before in Colorado. If we had had more time and kept tracing along Chute Creek, I imagine we would have run into even more waterfalls after this, but we were on a choose-your-own-adventure mission to find our way out of this valley and connect up with a section of the ever-popular Colorado Trail. Connecting over to that trail proved to be much more difficult than we ever could have anticipated, as the trail we were trying to make our way to was nearly 1000 ft more in elevation above us, with tall rocky cliffs and thick brush in our way.

We had known from the start of this choose-your-own-adventure mission that it might not be a successful one, in which case, we would simply head back the way we had come into the hike, but we were determined to find a way, as we were less than a mile away from the Colorado Trail (as the crow flies) and along that trail was another unique waterfall I hoped we’d get to see. It felt so disappointing to give up when we were so close, but after our hodge-podge method of way-finding and trying the “easiest” route based on tracing along the topo lines of our GPS, we were starting to become convinced we’d have no option but to turn back because we kept running into one cliff band after another that would dead-end us.

At one point during our hike, hubby had been several yards ahead trying to scope out whether a “path” would work for us and he suddenly began screaming “ow ow ow”. My first thought was that perhaps he had stepped on an ant hill, as I saw him frantically smacking his feet and arms. Turned out it was much worse — a wasp nest that was hiding in the ground!

As soon as he yelled in confirmation that it was wasps attacking him, I immediately bolted out of there in self-preservation mode, thinking the wasps would catch my scent and come after me as well. Hubby was carrying one of our pups, while I had the other pup, and it felt so heartbreaking to abandon hubby and our other pup, but there was nothing I could have done to protect them in that moment and it would have likely resulted in all four of us getting stung instead of two. Luckily, the pup that hubby had been holding somehow came out unscathed… but hubby was not so lucky.

Later when we connected back up, he described the horrific event and how several of the wasps were caught under the tongue of his hiking boot and they kept stinging him relentlessly on his arms and feet as he battled to swat them away while simultaneously trying to escape through the thick brush and over fallen logs. He ended up with at least a dozen stings! But if anyone had to be a victim in that type of scenario, I was selfishly glad it was him; not only would I have probably fainted directly on top of the wasp nest in sheer panic at the situation, I’m certain that my body would have overreacted to the stings, as I seem to be especially allergic to everything on this planet and overly sensitive to bites and anything that touches my skin. While hubby did had several itchy welts he had to tolerate that evening, relatively speaking, it seemed like the stings were mostly tolerable. I’m sure it wasn’t a pleasant way to spend the night sleeping in the backcountry after a long day of hiking though.

After this horrific situation, we were certainly traumatized and terrified of running into another nest in the ground. We hadn’t even seen a single wasp on the trail prior to this, so this situation definitely caught us off guard and made us wonder how many other nests were hiding. A couple of weeks after our hike, a friend was doing this hike and coincidentally exploring this same area where the trail disappears and also got bamboozled by a wasp nest. It certainly could not have been the same wasp nest because we were in a really random spot when we encountered the nest, so these two back-to-back incidents told us that we never ever want to be in this wild terrain past where the trail disappears ever again.

Eventually, we did find our way up to the trail above us after climbing some short cliff bands and tracing along a stream that had several red-hued waterfalls. Hubby was kind enough to haul my backpack up one of the tougher cliffs, as it was practically a V0 bouldering route and the last thing I wanted to do was have a misstep and tip backwards with my 25-lb backpack.

Not only was reaching the marked trail such a huge relief that we no longer had to be way-finding in the thick brush with hidden wasp nests beneath our feet ready to unleash a sneak attack on us, but the views at the top of this trail were breath-taking!

We continued about half a mile down the trail to the waterfall that was the whole reason for our off-the-cuff adventure. It was so cool that every waterfall on our hike was totally different than the last. We started off our hike with waterfalls that cascaded into turquoise blue pools, then got to see waterfalls surrounded by white rock, red red, and lastly, black rock!

We could see yet another waterfall in the distance that looked so close in person and yet so far at the same time! We started to make our way towards it, only to realize there was no trail — just annoyingly jagged rocks — so we quickly abandoned this plan because we were definitely not up for another off-the-cuff adventure that day, and retreated back to the main trail to find our sleeping quarters for the night.

We were lucky enough to snag a flat spot perched high on the trail with open views of the tall sharp peaks around us. The pups were so tired this second day and although they had nothing to complain about considering they hadn’t been carrying 25+ lb backpacks for two days, we still felt bad, so we shared plenty of our chili and goldfish crackers with them. Of course, they received plenty of their own food as well! That evening, we fell asleep to marmots chirping late into the evening and if it hadn’t been for our arduous day, their noisy chirps might have kept us up, but we fell right asleep!

The next morning on our hike out, we were able to loop around on the trail and see on the opposite side, the crazy canyon that we had climbed our way out of. We couldn’t believe we were even able to find a way out! This will be a fun adventure we will never forget though!