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Trip Report    

Backpack – Lenawee Mountain

Overnight trip no. 2 for BKPS Group 6. Weather turned out better than forecast seemed to suggest. We had an awesome hike on Saturday.......although preliminary estimates were about a 6-mile hike to do what we did. Turns out my GPS tracking indicated we did about 8.25 on Saturday......a challenging hike that pushed our group. We accomplished all learning objectives on Saturday and elected to come home early on Sunday as a result and also trying to avoid Sunday afternoon I-70 traffic. Awesome trip that everyone seemed to enjoy.

Sean O'Connell Sean O'Connell
July 14, 2025
  • Road rough but passable

  • The Chihuahua trail starts out from the Peru Creek as a 4-wheel drive road and remains rough road for probably 60% of the distance from the trailhead up to Grizzly Lake.  There was running water in quite a few places along the trail.  Creeks were running full and there were two crossings that required management where there was either no clear safe "bridge" across and resulted in wading across.  Several steep segments of trail required care in watching footing as there was quite a bit of loose gravel and sand, thus making conditions "slippery."

Trip was awesome.  Trailhead was pretty busy and parking was pretty limited, but we were able to manage.

Stage 1 fire ban was in effect, so we didn't do a camp fire build demonstration.

Wild flowers were really prolific......lots of Indian Paintbrush and many, MANY Colorado Columbine.........among others.  Columbines above tree-line, especially in the talus field at the last climb up to Grizzly lake were just overwhelming.

We set up camp and then took an extended hike up to Grizzly Lake.  That hike was maybe a bit challenging for most of us.  Two group members and one assistant instructor held back to wait for the rest of the group that climbed up to the lake. Weather held out and turned out to be awesome.  Some dark clouds seemed to be threats and a few distant thunder strikes, but those ended up being false threats as skies cleared and the rest of the afternoon was very fair.  Evening was slightly breezy but calmed down just before dusk and were calm overnight.  Mosquitos were present but not overwhelming at camp.  Forecast had temps of lows in upper 30s or low 40s, but we actually saw mid-40s.  Highs forecast was about 60, but we experienced highs much more comfortable than that.........guessing more close to 70 for most of Saturday.

I used Caltopo to produce my trip plan.  Hike distance estimate from trailhead to camp to Grizzly lake and back to camp was about 6 miles.  However, what my measurement showed (via Caltopo app) was that our trip was more like 8.25 miles on Saturday.  I recorded all-day long, so it recorded my every step, but I am not confident our actual mileage could be so far off of the online measurement via Caltopo on the web version. Elevation gain was about 1885-feet.

We left camp just after 8:00 AM on Suday for the short (~1.5 mile) hike back to the trailhead.  Some of us wanted to get back early and since we covered all our learning objectives on Saturday, we felt getting out early to beat I-70 traffic would be a good plan.