u/kachowco99

Hey team! I'm visiting my home state of Colorado and hiking / camping as much as possible. I have an awkward 4-day gap between a day trip to Aspen, and a stay in Leadville. I am looking for camping / campground suggestions to fill those days.

- June 6th: drive up to Maroon Bells (6 HOURS from home) this leg was supposed to be the 4 Pass Loop, but snow made me call it off.

- June 9th: Arrive in Leadville. I'm staying in a hostel while I do day hikes and also make myself relax.

Aspen --> Leadville is around 90 min. Any great trails / campground suggestions I can look into so I can fill the 3 day gap, in between Aspen and Leadville? I was thinking of going out of the way to Lake Dillion, as I'd love to kayak and my boyfriend knows a great camp spot around Lilly Pad Lake, but I worry about timing from getting done with Maroon Bells (shuttle at 11am and I'm only doing the little scenic route then heading back down) 2 hrs to Dillion, then the hike to the site - I worry it would be dark. I could camp at the sites near Maroon Bells, but all are either booked or are first come-first serve, and I don't want to hedge my bets on that.

I am a solo woman with a hammock camping set up. I have a 4WD with decent clearence. Not looking for anything too rigorous on my car or me. Truly if all else fails, I can likely stay at the hostel a few days earlier than anticipated. I know there are endless options, and wanted to see if you guys had any gems! thanks 😄

My fiance and I had a flight to Denver at 7:15 yesterday morning. 20 minutes after boarding the plane, the pilot tells us there is a maintenance issue that they are trying to resolve. If not, we need to deplane. Well, after 20 minutes we deplane and are told our flight now leaves at 3:00 at the same gate. Total bummer, but we were able to wait it out.

We come back to board around 2:00, there is no plane at the gate. 3:00 rolls around, no plane. We are told its being brought back from maintenance, and there is another plane approaching out gate that is actually for Chicago, not us, and that our plane will be coming after. We are then told our plane will be coming up to gate 57 instead, and everyone needs to go over there. There was a flight to St Louis waiting at that gate as well, so everyone was really confused. we waiting about an hour before we could even board. We board around 5:00.

Our plane was about half full than our original plane (people cancelled or rebooked). After waiting 45 minutes after the plane was closed, the pilot tells us that our plane is not the correct load weight, as we are much lighter now than we were this morning, and we have way too much gas. So until we had a proper read on the weight, we can't fly. Maybe 30 minutes later, we have a correct weight and gas, and we can leave.

There was about 45-50 planes taxiing, so we pulled out of the gate... and stopped. Pilot says there is quite a long line, and ATC doesn't know where to put us and cannot prioritize our takeoff. Pilot said he was advised not to shut off our engines, as we can get moving at any time. This is when my fiance tells me we might be burning gas while sitting here (and we had to reduce our amount of gas earlier due to weight) that we might have to go back to the gate to refuel. I told him he was wrong.

he was right.

Its probably around 7:30pm now, and the pilot tells us we need to go back to the gate to refuel, because not only have we burned through so much gas just sitting there, but because of weather in the west, we were re-routed to go up into Canada, then fly back down to Colorado to avoid the storms, so we won't have enough fuel. People are pretty defeated right now, everyone has missed the connection they had. We get back to the gate probably around 9:30pm. Turns out, all flights were cancelled, so when we finally got off the plane, it was a shitshow. We can't talk to anyone at the service desks. We were told our luggage (we had one checked bag full of camping gear lol) was going to be at carousel 5 or 6.

At this point we don't really know what to do. He gets an email saying his flight is rebooked for Thursday afternoon, but I don't get anything about mine, and turns out we never will get an official rebooking email for me. So we decide to go get our bag. It gets to 10:30pm, my bag does not show up, along with a few other people from my flight who were direct to Denver. Those who had connections from Denver were able to get their luggage. So I check my claim number from checking it this morning.

my bag is in fucking Denver.

So I cried just a little bit. My fiance is in line upstairs where check-in is, and is also on the phone with Chase (we booked through chase travel) to see if they can get us through to Southwest. I went up to meet him when I knew my bag was not down there. We get through to Southwest and it turns out that they rebooked me for a flight at 7:15 am to Denver for the next day, I was like no. He asked that I get moved to the same Thursday flight as him. It does thankfully work out, so we're rebooked, although I still haven't gotten an email, and nor has he. My bag is in Denver, so we can grab it when we're there. We got home at 1:30am. It was extremely awful. We were sent a $100 voucher each for a future trip, but I feel like we deserve a refund, lol. That was actually the worst trip of my life, and I didn't leave NYC.

Hi team,

long time lurker, first time poster. I grew up in Colorado hiking, but never backpacking. Life got crazy busy in college, and I moved out east, and haven't yet explored backpacking out here. I have always wanted to do much longer, involved trips back home, my first planned one last year with my fiance got cancelled because I broke my foot the month before.

A chance to be home for 2 months made me plan quite a few hikes. I was supposed to go to Estes for an overnight trip with my fiance this week, but we cancelled due to snow. I was supposed to be shown how to use the jetboil, water filter, where to put the bear can, etc etc. He has done plenty of backpacking, although never solo and wanted to give me plenty of pointers.

That said, I have a 3 night / 4 day hike planned in Maroon Bells mid-June, solo. My fiance did this hike with his best friend last year, and encouraged me to do it, but is now worried about it, especially with Estes cancelled. As I get closer, I'm both worried that i'm in over my head, but I am also confident I can do it! I have never backpacked. I have camped, I have done long day hikes. I acclimate to altitude quickly while I'm home, so I'm not worried about struggling at a high-altitude hike. I am in shape, I have common sense, I know how to set up camp, I'm going to take diligent notes and probably save some videos of everything I need to know. I'll have a Garmin GPS that, if anything goes terribly wrong, a click of a button will send a helicopter. Its an extremely popular trail, I know I won't be in total isolation. At most, I'm just worried about feeling lonely. I understand how vulnerable I am and how quickly things can go wrong, but also... I was never worried about it until everyone else was.

I just really, really want this. I want a challenge!! Of the 3+ trips I have tried to plan, life, weather, or a broken foot has cancelled it and I am tired of waiting. Am I being stupid by doing my first backpacking trip over 4 days, solo? of the 2 month trip, this is my only backpacking trip, and its the first on the itinerary. Please be realistic, thanks