Williams Creek Trail, 9 miles from Lake City, Colorado, is a special delight—one of those rare trails which immediately rewards the senses and then gets even better.
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| Rita and Annie start the hike on a June Day in the Colorado Mountains. |
My husband Tim, our dog Annie and I started along the trail under the shade of young aspens and soon entered a meadow with expansive views of the Continental Divide. After crossing the meadow the trail enters an aspen, pine and spruce forest. A small stream crossing and a hillside traverse led us past the trunk of a giant Douglas Fir Tree. This tree, most of which toppled during a 2001 storm, still boasts massive exposed roots stretching uphill and downhill across the trail. We stopped for photographs and continued on, crossing the creek again and then angling across a sidehill beneath cliffs and spires of volcanic rock.
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| The roots of this Douglas Fir stretch across the trail (next to Annie on the lower left). |
The sidehill levels off and we entered a valley filled with the remnants of beaver ponds. The beavers are long gone, bleached logs of their imposing dams and lodges are the only signs of their long-ago dominance here. Mountain meadows are in the process of reclaiming the ponds, but a few mud bogs remain. Annie delighted in these bogs, belly-flopping in the mud and lapping up the fetid water.
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| Annie asks: "Should I play in the mud bogs, (to the left, not pictured) or should I cross the old pond to dry land?" She chose the mud bogs. |
We passed by the meadows and traversed a talus slope, evidence of a giant rock slide. A long uphill climb alongside the slide led to the shores of a dried-up lake. In days past this must have been a great destination for a backpacking trip but now a grassy depression is all that remains. Did this former alpine lake dry up due to diversion of the water for some other use? Or because the snowmelt no longer flows into this area? We didn’t know. We did know though—lake or no lake—this was an excellent place to stop for a lunch snack and a photograph.
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| The trail climbs steadily alongside this old rock slide. |
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| Rita and Annie enter the large open meadow that shows evidence of being a former alpine lake. |
The area, about 2.5 miles from the trailhead, also makes a good turn-around spot for a morning hike. And so we did. Whether you choose to hike for 1 hour, 4 hours or 12 hours, the Williams Creek Trail will reward you every step of the way.
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| This map shows the Williams Creek Trail near Lake City. The black arrow points to the general area where we turned around. The trail crosses Bureau of Land Management land which means you may set up camp anywhere along the trail. |
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Williams Creek Trail joins the Alpine Gulch Trail for a total one-way trek of 13 miles (strenuous) and could also be done as an overnight backpack shuttle hike, leaving a car at both the Williams Creek and Alpine Gulch Trailheads. The trail is dog friendly. Our dog Annie enjoyed running over the rocky slopes, romping through the meadows, and slogging through what remained of the beaver ponds (mud holes).
Read about other adventures in the Lake City area:
