Blowdown Pass, Gotcha Peak
The first hike we did was up Gotcha Peak in the Blowdown Pass area just off of the Duffey. For more instructions on location refer to my trip report on Gott Peak. Gotcha Peak is a slightly shorter,
but more rugged hike than Gott. A very easy objective for a day hike and is often done in combination with Gott Peak. The only issue I had with this hike was the weather. Forecasts called for on/off rain for the day and the temperature had cooled off very significantly. We arrived at the parking area on the well beaten logging road of Blowdown FSR at about 1050 and started hiking up the old rough 4x4 road to Blowdown Pass. We stuck to the right at the fork in the road, which sticks closer to Blowdown Lake. Here we saw a few people camped along the lake. So far the day was chilly, but dry, and there was the odd patch of blue sky here and there. Views were not optimal because of the low cloud, but not too shabby either. |
The walk up the summit block was a bit tedious over boulders, but not too bad. My biggest complaint was that the clouds rolled into us as we climbed and it started to snow sideways. I was quite shocked, it was cold, but I didn't think it was that cold! We all kind of laughed and carried on up the slope. About 200m from the summit we had to do about 10m of clambering up on hands and feet, but nothing alarming. We arrived at the summit at 1240.
We had a break, snapped some photos, and had a snack. However, we didn't linger long because the snow started to fly again and it was chilly. We were a bit zealous headed in the wrong direction on the way down, but corrected ourselves quickly. We made it back to the truck mainly without incident by 1500.
Holbrook Creek
The road we had driven up on carried on to the left of the lake. It is an old mining road and is now a very rough 4x4 road into the alpine. I should mention that motorized vehicles are to stay on pre-existing roads above 1700m and are not allowed to "off-road," which disturbs the fragile alpine environment and takes hundreds of years to heal. We walked this mining road and stuck left at the fork above the lake. We could see that we were headed for snow and fog, but carried on anyways.
The hike back down was without incident, but it did start to rain quite good when we were just below the snow level. We hustled our way back to the truck and cranked the heat. I must return and camp on the beautiful lake and retry this peak!