I'm writing this blog to share the story of a recent trip me and two of my buddies had to Mt. Blanca and Lake Como Colorado. Let me first say that this trip is no joke, if you are not in shape, have heart, breathing or any medical problems, this is not the trip for you. They call Como Lake road the worst road in Colorado but I would venture to say it's the worst road in America. I have never been on or heard of a road any worse then this one. They say a person can walk up this road faster then you can drive and that is absolutely true. We started our adventure in our home state of Arkansas at about 5am on a Thursday. We arrived at the trailhead at about 6:30 pm mouontain time and unloaded the 3 quads we had, loaded all our gear on them and took off on the 6 mile road towards Lake Como. At first we were having a blast, grinning from ear to ear just enjoying the what I thought was a rough but doable road, letting our quads do all the work for us. Ha look at me on my quad, these people hiking from the bottom are silly. Well my easy road lasted for about a mile and a half then it turned into the road from hell. It's hard to describe really how hard this road is, I would say it's a brutyle, vehicle destroying, ankle twisting rock sliding mess. The granite rock go from gravel to boulders 3 or 4 feet around that weigh a metric ton. As we were making our way up the mountain, we were on the third or forth switchback and the Polaris crapped out on us do to the oxygen in the carberator we think. We parked the quad, unloaded the gear and strapped it down to the Honda's and we were on our way again. We drove into the night and made it up about half way to a sweet little campsite that was a life saver after our dangerous drive in the dark. At this point, there is no place to get water so you should bring enough from the begining which we did not. We spent the night on the ground and woke to the sound of the rock crawlers making they're way up the mountain. Our first and foremost plan that morning was to make it to the creek to fill up our water bottles and in Roberts case, the canteen. After rejuvinating our systems and cooling off the quads, we turned the corner and faced a pretty knarley hill right off the bat. This is where the road turns ruthless, I got wedged between two rocks and started spinning so we all jumped off and got me unstuck and I was on my way. Neil hit the same trail with the same outcome and once again it's get off and push. Word to the wise, bring quads that are 4x4 with winches or be prepared to lift, move, rotate and basically help your quad all the way up. This road is extremely steep too, there are parts where the gravel is so loose and the road is so steep that we had to get two or three runs at it before we could even make it up. As we got to Jaws 1, it was almost over for us. We unloaded some gear and helped eachother over the rock with a rope attached to the 4 wheeler rack to help keep everything we had from falling off the side of the hill. Great! We made it all safe and sound now back on the trail just so we can make it to Jaws 2. Jaws 2 probably took us 30 minutes of prep before we would even attempt it. There is a memorial plaque in the rock of a man who sadely lost his life trying to traverse this same rock back in the 70's. With 3 of us pushing we got both quads up and over Jaws2 just to face more unbelievable terrain. After a few hours of up and down and bouncing all over the place we make it to Jaws3. This is one nasty rock! I tried driving my quad up this beast and it wasn't having none of it. I don't know if it was to loaded down or if it was just me but I got in a fight with the mountain and the mountain won. This was the end of the line for the quads and the begining of the line for us humping our gear on our back. We are now about 1 mile from the lake but it might as well been 10 miles. None of us were really acclimated yet, we didn't have enough water and our gear was entirely to heavy. We made the executive decision to ditch half our crap under a tree and hike up what we could for now just so we could get to the lake and get some sort of camp established. About an hour later I found myself throwing down my Kelty backpack, grabbing my water filter and water bottles and getting to the creek as soon as I could. At this point I was feeling squimish and weak from altitude sickness I think. I was definetly feeling the effects of dehydration at this point for sure. I got as much water down me as possible and then started back down the mountain in search of my friends. Around the corner about a half mile or so from the lake I find Neil and Robert half passed out laying in the shade trying to catch they're breath. We are about 10,500 ft at this point and oxygen seems to be hard to find. After we regrouped, we made the push to the top and made camp on the west side over by the creek. We checked out the survival cabin, looked around a little bit thanking god we finally made it and then passed out on our sleeping bags. After a couple of hours we decided to make our way back down the mountain to get the rest of our stuff. When we got everything up to the camp we did a little celebration dance and made some lunch. Setting up the tent, building fire and getting water were all on our to do list after that. Gathering fire wood is really slim pickins around the lake. We really had to be resourceful in our fire wood collecting. All the trees around had no limbs as far as you could reach. We found a few old big logs and enough kindling to get a fire going finally. When I woke up the next day I felt so sick and out of it all I could think about was what in the world am I doing here. Altitude sickness and dehydration will really mess with your brain. A few asprin and a couple of liters of water later I was finally comming around to my senses. The rest of the day was spent working on camp and trying to eat. The next day it was rock crawler central up on top, rock crawler after rock crawler, jeep after jeep came up the mountain like some sort of crawler convention. Every possible campsite was taken up with jeep parking all over the lake. It was fun seeing all the crawlers but it wasn't exactly quite and peaceful like we had expected. Our camp was right on the side of the jeep trail that went around the south side of the lake and was the favorite snooping around spot for a very curious dog named FJ. The trout fishing was awesome, we practiced catch and release and landed some where between 70 and 80 between us, it was like taking candy from a baby! They basically only bite on one thing though. So anyways, Sunday came and it was time for all the rock crawlers to start they're way down and for us to start our way up Blanca. Neil decided his breathing wasn't good enough to make the hike up to the summit so Robert and I started out to the top. We came around the east side and got on the jeep road to the Blue lakes, took some pictures and started up the switchback above the Blue lakes by the water fall. Let me tell you, this is no easy hike but by now we are feeling pretty good. We got passed by a couple of sets of people on our way to the top clearly in better shape then we were. We are about half way up by now and have made it to a couple of unnamed lakes that we took it upon ourselves to name just for the fun of it. We kept pressing on and made it to the last big lake that we named Emerald Lake because of its deep emerald color. After another hour and a half we made it to the top, finally. There are several trails and markers along the way so just pick the one that works best for you. We spent about 5 minutes on top due to the 40mph wind and the 20 degree temp. The view from the top is just breathtaking, you can see everything to the east, the west, the Great Sand Dunes, Creston, Needles, Ellingwood, Little Bear and other peaks. A few pictures and we were on our way down. In a couple of hours we were back to camp with tired legs and one mean blister on the back of my foot. This hike was extremely hard to say the least. I rate this hike an 8 on the hard hikes to do list. You will find people saying how easy this hike is but believe me, this is not the norm, this is for freak hikers who eat drink and sleep hiking up big mountains. If you are an average hiker or not use to altitude, this hike is a difficult one. Worth every minute of it though and wouldn't trade it for the world! The rest of the day was spent recouping from the hike and packing up for the big hike down to the quads. We made it to the 4 wheelers the next morning after packing up camp and making a few donations to the survival cabin. The road down was so much easier then the way up, it started drizzling on us for the first time on the trip but didn't stop us from getting off the mountain. We made it to the Polaris after an hour and a half and the dang thing wouldn't start. We hooked up a tow rope to the quad and towed it a mile or so before it finally started. We made it back to the truck safe and sound around 10:30 a.m., got everything loaded and were on our way back home smelling pretty awesome! If you were wondering, there are no showers up at the lake and there isn't a Starbucks on top of Blanca. If you have ever wanted a challenge or to prove something to yourself this is a great adventure waiting for you. Some people rock crawl, some hike from the bottom, some ride dirt bikes, we drove quads. I am on the look out for other Colorado hikes and mountains to climb so if anyone out there has any help or advice pleaselet me know. To those of you who are headed for Blanca good luck and let me know how it went! Thanks to everyone who helped us on our adventure.
