Back in Colorado from my long summer stay with my parents in New Jersey and travels on the East Coast, I was eager to get some mountain hiking in during the cooler sunnier days of September when thunderstorms are less frequent than in summer. I was also interested in attending the Scottish-Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park this year on the weekend after Labor Day since it's something that’s been "On My List" for quite a while. I decided to make a three day loop out of it with two day hikes in Grand County and Rocky Mountain National Park and then attend the opening Tattoo and first day of the Highlands Festival.

Grand County is north of I-70 and across 11,300 foot Berthoud Pass from Denver on U .S. 40, a road that has approaches to the top from both sides that have always struck me as particularly treacherous in snow compared to the interstate or even Loveland Pass. I thought I’d make a quick stop at the Empire Mine a short detour from the road on the way up to the pass. On the other side of the pass lies Winter Park ski area, one of the larger ones in Colorado but one more popular with Front Range skiers than a resort attracting multitudes of the beautiful people from the coasts.

The Fraser Valley north of Winter Park includes the towns of Fraser and Granby and has some ranches but is mostly covered with evergreen trees. It’s often the coldest place in the U.S. when there are no major outbreaks of polar air which give that daily honor to spots in Minnesota or North Dakota.

My original plan was to head into a valley northwest of Winter Park ski area on some forest service roads and climb/hike a 12,500 foot peak I found described in a guidebook . That’s a local area I’ve never been into and thought would be some interesting new scenery. I was stopped, though, by a forest ranger. The road into the area was closed for a few days for road maintenance. Foiled!

My alternative hike was on the other (eastern) side of the Fraser Valley, the hike to The Devil’s Thumb along the Continental Divide in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. The Devil’s Thumb is a tall rock that juts up near the top of the ridge far from any similar formations and can be seen from miles around. I’ve been on hikes in the valleys of the east side of the Divide in the region but had not done one from the west.

The drive to the trailhead was quite a few miles and on some fair dirt roads, nothing for which a four wheel drive is needed. The trail started off as a pleasant level walk in the woods but then climbed quite steeply and consistently for about 2,500 feet (that’s about three hours in Warren speed) through thick evergreen forest . The trees shrank to shrub size towards the top and the last half mile or so of zigs and zags to the ridgeline were in the open tundra. That’s what I like – hiking with a constant view!

The Devil’s Thumb is just to the east of the ridgeline and doesn’t become visible on the trail from the west side until almost the summit. It’s one of those knock-your-socks off views, but is it a thumb? I can think of other body parts it might resemble.

You realize then you’re on the Continental Divide and you might be tempted to pee so that some eventually flows to the Atlantic via the Platte, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers and some to the Pacific via the Colorado River. There’s no one around, so you don’t have to worry about anyone seeing you! A few miles to the south the Rollins Pass Road was in view. It made me realize I could have driven to the top of the Continental Divide here on the four wheel drive track and done a nice easy ridge hike to the Devil’s Thumb rather than dragging my chubby body uphill through the forest for hours .

Rollins Pass isn’t a through road anymore, though. I tried to do that once in the early 1990s from the east side. There was a tunnel collapse that has never been fixed, so you can only access the summit from the Grand County side.

I barely recall my hike back down through the forest. It either went very fast because I had gravity on my side, or maybe I was just high on endorphins from exercise and euphoric. It was quite a long drive on fairly rough dirt roads to get back to U.S. 40 in a northwesterly direction rather than backtracking my way in.

I spent the night car camping in Grand Lake, a resort town on a natural lake of the same name below the spectacular peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park. Grand Lake is the first significant lake below the headwaters of the Colorado River and the town is a kind of western gateway to the national park. I passed it many times on the road, but this was my first time turning off and spending some time in the pleasant town.