June 12, 2026
It was a typical balmy June afternoon in Denver as I picked up Toshi from the airport. We quickly grabbed our last real meal for several days and then headed up I-70 towards the mountains. From the roads below, the Gore was kind of an unassuming range. Smaller foreground hills mostly blocked out views of the jagged crest, which only appeared occasionally for fleeting moments.
The air was dusty and warm as we pulled into Surprise Trailhead which was no more than a large pullout on the side of a dirt road facing a creek. After a final check of the packs, we set off across a bridge and up the Surprise Trail at 3:48pm.
We only had a few hours of daylight left but wanted to get a head start, especially with the forecasted storms coming in after the following day. It was prudent that we push as close as possible to cache 1 before the storms hit and potentially trapped us in one spot for a while.
The next few hours found us hiking up the gradually meandering Surprise Trail, gaining 2,400 ft of elevation in 6.4 miles to Upper Cataract Lake. There was a decent amount of recent deadfall on the upper portions of trail, confirming the high winds I had been tracking over the range. We reached Upper Cataract Lake with a couple hours of daylight to spare, taking time to set up camp and filter water for the next day. This seemed to be a decently popular spot to camp as there were several other parties nearby. A goat paced back and forth between camps, occasionally pausing to scuff up the ground.
Upper Cataract Lake
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