Backpacking Colorado’s Collegiate Peaks – Kroenke Lake, Browns Pass, & Texas Creek

There is innate compounding constantly going on in the brains of backpackers.

Once you’ve done a 10 mile day, a 12 mile day becomes feasible. When you’ve been out for a 5-night trip, you realize you could find a way to make a 7-night trip work with your same pack and setup. If you can stomach being 15 miles from the nearest road on the Two Ocean Plateau, being nearly 25 miles from the nearest road at the Thorofare Ranger Station doesn’t seem too beyond the pale.

The mental logbook of Type II fun and accomplishments does that to your brain, and it’s no real different that prepping the muscles of your legs through training to cover distances you’ve never yet achieved. Pushing boundaries and limits to know what you are truly capable of accomplishing, and relishing it when you eventually pull it off.

It’s confidence building, plain and simple. Confidence that you’ll get dry (and not hypothermic) if you get wet, confidence gained from sleeping in bear country and waking up alive, confidence that you know exactly how much food you need to get through each day. Confidence that your legs, your tent, your pack itself can hold up through enough rigors that you can begin to plan accordingly for your next great trek.

That’s all part of it. That’s how you build up to push yourself into the great wilds this planet still has to offer, to see the things that most everyone else won’t simply because you were willing, able, and prepared – physically, mentally, and with the supplies you’d need – to make it happen.

Not every backpacking trip needs to push a limit, of course. To loop a skiing analogy in here as winter descends on the Colorado mountains over my shoulder, just because you know you can drop rocks in backcountry terrain doesn’t mean bombing down a groomed blue can’t bring a giant smile to your face, too.

Colorado’s Collegiate Peaks Wilderness encompasses some 168,000 protected acres in the heart of the Sawatch Range in just about as ‘middle of Colorado’ as you can get. Eight 14,000+ foot tall mountains are within its boundaries, including Mount Harvard (14,421 feet) – the third highest peak in Colorado and fourth tallest in the lower 48 states.

Due both to peakbaggers seeking to summit these 14ers and the incredible views afforded to drivers along both US-285 and US-24 in the aptly named Buena Vista area, the Collegiates do get a reputation for being ‘busy’ by wilderness standards. Both the Continental Divide Trail and both branches of the Colorado Trail through the Collegiates similarly bring in backpacking enthusiasts, while most all the alpine lakes between 10,000 and 12,000 feet are loaded with the kind of trout fishing that brings in anglers from around the world.

Whether you are hiking or backpacking the numerous trails in the area, you’re likely to run into people – especially on weekends. And while that’s a turn-off for many who use backpacking as a way to find solitude, I sometimes have to force myself to step back and re-discover just why so many folks are out there in the first place.

This area is simply gorgeous. The giant monoliths that are the Sawatch 14ers create large, sweeping gulches and drainages, with treeline pushing to 12,000 feet underneath rocky, often snow-covered crags above it. Nowhere else in the lower 48 states can you put together a three, or even four-day trip that maintains elevation like you can in the Collegiates, and despite the high-alpine options all around you there’s always a creek, or a lake, or both that you can drop down into by your side.

There are certainly ways to kick your own ass in the Collegiates, and to push yourself to – and beyond – your previous boundaries. There are also a handful of ways to see what brings out the crowds to this beautiful area while pulling off a multi-day trip that, on paper, won’t break any of your personal mileage or elevation-gain records.

Such is the case when you head west out of the North Cottonwood Creek Trailhead northwest of Buena Vista. It’s the origin for those who seek to climb Mount Harvard from the standard route up Horn Fork Basin, with that trail splitting right at a fork roughly a mile and two-thirds in on the trail. You can climb Harvard’s south slopes that way via a Class 2 route, but for this particular trip guide/report I’ll assume you stayed left at that initial fork in the trail.

Staying left keeps you on the Kroenke Lake Trail towards Browns Pass, with the foot of the lake at the end of a moderate climb up about 1,600 feet over the course of just over 4 miles. When you get there, you’ll be greeted with views of Mount Yale (14,200 feet) to your left and the switchback route up to Browns Pass dead ahead.

When you get to Kroenke Lake, you’ll be greeted with a half-dozen well established campsites, some tucked in the trees below the foot with others dispersed around the northwest shore of the lake itself. You’ll probably find someone already in at least one of those sites seeing as it’s an accessible lake with great views, and odds are they’ll be fishing as the lake holds both cutthroat and (reportedly) the elusive golden trout within its banks. Still, it’s a large enough lake to get a little space to yourself at night with views of Yale dominating throughout your stay.

A night spent at Kroenke Lake on the east side of Browns Pass makes for an easy first day of a multi-day excursion into this southwest corner of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. It’s a simple, straightforward overnight should you simply want to pack up and head back to the car the next morning.

If you want to stretch this entrypoint into a longer trip, however, a push up and over Browns Pass into the Texas Creek drainage opens up routes to both Lake Rebecca and Lake Claire just on the south side of the Continental Divide, or an even further push up Waterloo Gulch to the south side of the Three Apostles.

Tacking on a leg from Kroenke Lake over Browns Pass and all the way to Lake Rebecca would be a much more challenging day than the first on this route. Per Gaia GPS, it’s a push of just over 7 miles and 2,500 feet of elevation gain in total, with a little over 1,000 feet of that coming in the first mile and a half heading up Browns Pass from the lake itself.

So, to make this trip a true out and back you’d be staring at a roughly 11 mile day back over the pass, the lake, and down to the car on day three, a scenario that becomes more palatable by knowing your food bag would be lighter, there’s water accessible at all points along the trail, and that you’d be shedding some 3,000 feet of elevation along the way.

If you’re in a larger group and can dump a car at, say Cottonwood Pass, that opens up a route out of the Texas Creek drainage and, eventually, up and out along South Texas Creek. There are numerous five-star camping sites along this route with water accessible throughout, the views of the Continental Divide and Collegiate Peaks precisely why the Timberline Overlook near Cottonwood Pass along Chaffee County Road 306 was established in the first place.

It is, quite simply, a sub-alpine basin with some of the best views Colorado has to offer. It’s like they knew what they were doing when they named the nearest town Buena Vista.

If You Go…

• Always practice Leave No Trace principles while in the backcountry.

• Dispersed camping is allowed in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, though it’s always recommended that you prioritize using sites that have already been established so as to help preserve the grasses and vegetation in the area. There are numerous of these sites within the Texas Creek drainage.

• Always pay attention to local and federal fire restrictions in the area.

• Given the area’s high elevation The Texas Creek drainage often is covered in snow well into the summer, and it gets snowier earlier in the fall than the lower lakes nearby. I’d suggest contacting the rangers in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest for updates on the snowpack before planning, or attempting, any trip in the area outside of peak summer season. Y’know what? You should probably contact them for condition updates before any trip, any time.

Need to gear up for an upcoming backpacking trip? REI’s got select camping and hiking gear discounted up to 25% right now! Full disclosure: purchases made through some of the links listed in this article will earn me a small commission, something I use to keep the lights on here at Lit Wick.