Kenosha Pass / Beaver Creek
Driving from Deer Creek to Beaver Creek, CO | Hiking the Colorado Trail at Kenosha Pass | Camping & Hiking at Beaver Creek | October 2024
After two nights at Deer Creek Campground, we drove back to US-285 and began driving West. Today’s goal was to find a free and quiet spot to camp for the weekend, and to enjoy the views and fall colors along the way. Since we were driving over Kenosha Pass, that seemed like an easy place to stop and go for a short hike.
As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones with that idea. When we arrived, we found the lots along the side of the road were almost completely full. This was shocking to us, given that it was a Thursday morning, a little past peak fall color, there weren’t any especially nice trails or views, and it was almost an hour from Denver. All the people and traffic here reaffirmed in our minds that we wanted to seek out less popular areas to explore. But since we were here and didn’t have any other easy plans, we decided to go for a short walk anyway. Almost right away after we stopped, a woman came up to Curtis and asked if he could help her with her drone. We don’t have a drone and don’t know anything about them, but all she wanted him to do was unscrew a broken propeller and attach the replacement. He happily obliged, and after he was done she gave him $5 for helping. Not necessary, but very kind of her!
After that, we set out on a little hike on the Colorado Trail. We first passed through the Kenosha Pass Campground — which was currently closed, though the weather was still fine. I imagine it would be full if it were still open! We ended up following a service road up a little ways, then looping back on the CT. We didn’t really have a goal in mind, just wanted to stretch our legs and see what we could. There were little pockets of color here and there, and the best view came from where the power lines cut through, but aside from that it was just a walk in the woods with possibly the most people we’d see outside of the front range.
Once we made it back to the van, we continued heading West towards Fairplay. When we arrived in town, we headed towards Beaver Creek Road in the National Forest. We knew that there were a few dispersed campsites down this road that met our requirements: not a 4×4 only road, had some cell service, and enough sun for our solar panels. We just had to put up with several miles of washboard road to get there. We passed by a couple spots that looked like they were once dispersed sites, but were now blocked off — but they were small and in the shade, so they wouldn’t have been great for solar. Instead we kept driving, and eventually found two large spots, and one was available. We claimed the spot, and were quite pleased with it. It was large enough for Charlotte to wander around, was definitely open enough for solar and just a bit of reception. It even had access to a stream, so we grabbed our water filtration bag and filled it up to help supplement our water supply — something we hadn’t tried before, and now that we know it works, we can see this opening up possibilities for going even longer without having to refill our water tank!
Besides all that, Curtis had also been hoping to hike to a peak this weekend, and had one in mind that he hoped he could access from this spot. Once we arrived and got all set up, he did a bit more research and learned that this exact spot was actually the starting point from other trip reports he found online! It was quite a big hike for him, so I’ll let him write about that in the next post.
This ended up being a great spot to spend the weekend. Curtis went on his hike on our first full day here, and after that we stayed another two days. We took lots of walks with Charlotte on the forest road, and sat outside in the sun during the warmest parts of the day. The first morning we were here was the coldest, and we awoke to frost on the ground, but our heater worked great through the nights, which was a relief given we had never tried to run it at this high of elevation before (we were just over 10,000 feet!). During the day, we would occasionally see trucks drive through, but we only ever saw someone else camping here on our first and last nights.
We had hoped to see some wildlife here, especially since several reviews said they had seen moose here and it seemed like all the conditions were right. But after 4 nights here, all we saw were some very curious birds that tried to steal Charlotte’s food, and at least one beaver hard at work in the creek. This was easily the most dammed creek we’ve ever seen, with so much evidence of beavers taking down trees all around.
When it was finally time to move on, we drove back the way we came towards Fairplay. On our way, we stopped at a trailhead to walk on the boardwalk over the creek. It was mostly just to stretch our legs, though we also hoped it would give the moose one last chance to show themselves to us. No such luck, so instead we said goodbye for now and continued on our way. Try as we might, our moose sightings remain contained to the state of Wyoming.
