Ah, the Ute Peak saga. My first hike in the area was almost, but not quite, up to the top of Ute Peak. Then I wandered up Darling Creek. Then I came at Ute Peak once more, but from a long way around. The trails connecting the two South Fork Trailhead were something I really wanted to know about, but FS and OSM were keeping quiet. The only thing in the area mapped on OSM was a strange alternate CDT route that vanished whenever I tried to zoom in. I hiked on the Forest Service quads. They had some strange ideas for Ute Peak, but not half as strange as I found when I got signal up high and got the USGS maps of the area.

Anyway, I started mapping by adding the Darling Creek trail up to Saint Louis Divide. This is one of the South Fork Trail’s trailheads, so I figured get it done first so South Fork can build on it. I also tried to get Saint Louis Divide on. There’s not a lot of trail to the trailhead on the east and it can be seen on satellite. There’s some really good game trails in the area, too. They can be the easiest trail of all to see in this area. I’m not mapping them, but did seem to get a little obsessed with mapping this area that is so undermapped. (Denver, what you up to? This is your backyard!)

Then I added Ute Peak. I did it via the Ute Peak Trail, but the more common route is from Ute Pass. USGS has a pair of lines that eventually get to Ute Peak somewhere entirely different from the actual junction. I used the Strava heat map background on Strava-iD to find the trail.

From there, I followed my backpacking loop backwards. It actually helped in finding the trail along the ridge. Where I had lost it going the one way, I could find it headed the other. There’s one spot where there were definitely at least two trails. I took the trail past the only tree cuts I found. (There’s not a lot of trees up there and not a lot of them are down, but there’s cuts on a few!) There are also two signs to pass. Still no earthly idea how it is supposed to go on the side of Ptarmigan Peak. It certainly doesn’t go directly, it’s steeper than that. From Ptarmigan Peak, I continued the line to Ptarmigan Pass. The Forest Service assures me that it goes to the pass. (It also claims the length is about what it takes to get to Ute Peak and no further.) I found what looks like trail along there and drew the line there. There’s no other input. The maps just write the name of the trail on the county/forest line along the ridge. There also looks like trail way down the side avoiding the peak. Then I was done with Ute Peak Trail.

So Ptarmigan Pass. It’s easy enough to find in the area I hiked. There’s an old trail higher up that I could see trail markers along, but land slide happens and moved it, I think. Maybe they just decided to go past the creek at a more reliable spot. Either way, the trail is obviously officially moved. The part I didn’t hike is very hard to see anything. That’s kind of why I didn’t hike it. No idea where the trail was, I abandoned it because it was just extra hiking anyway. I had some trail sign along the ridge and now realize that was Ute Peak Trail going to Ptarmigan Pass. While I was at it, I fixed up the rest of the Ptarmigan Pass Trail down to the trailhead. There is enough visible and other data to be sure of the route. Since that strange CDT-alt line went on the Ptarmigan loop, and it was easily seen, I decided to fix it too. First was finding it was just a “line” and I marked it with “highway=path”. I later found an odd tag: “route=path”. So that’s why it vanished. It was rough and needed a lot of work. I also got rid of (changed to trails) a few “track roads” in the wilderness. Not on my watch! These were the Ptarmigan Pass Trail. Incidentally, the Forest Service says both ways, going to the peak and going to the pass, are Ptarmigan Pass. I decided to call the one to the peak Ptarmigan Peak. Both have different numbers from the start and finish of the trail, which are connected by the bit that doesn’t go to the peak. It’s a head scratcher. There were also some weird doubling of tracks and paths and a general mess in the lower reaches of this trail. The photos do show some extra routes, but not paralleling each other. Crossing and doing normal trail things. So some things got removed. There were also a couple spots where the trail had the wrong route and instead of move it, someone drew another route. The pictures didn’t support that both were hiking routes, so I corrected and got rid of the extra. Once I got the switchbacks down to South Fork, I was done with Ptarmigan Pass.

And I suddenly went back to the beginning of South Fork and worked on the part I hadn’t hiked. I put in the boardwalk and the trail and found details on Strava that support that people actually cross the creek to the road near the end, then cross back on the connector at the end of the road. It wasn’t on the FS maps, but it is online. I later found that the boardwalk and trail to it from South Fork are a different name and corrected that.

Then I was back to my hike. South Fork as it goes high. There were too many trails in a bunch of spots through here. Which is correct? To some extent, it depends on which direction you are going. I met a section hiker traveling north on this CDT-alt route. He was up high where I’d determined I needed to get to already to have trail. I was following trail from the other side that was rapidly vanishing. The two just go until they aren’t there and there’s no determined spot to change from one to the other. It’s like animal trails, but there’s cairns and worked sticks marking it once in a great while. It took a while to finish off South Fork and I had to do it in pieces. I also added a few of the roads around Bobtail Mine. In fact, there’s a road that the trail follows for a while. It’s pretty good down to a stream gage, then downright ATV to a vent for the Henderson Mine’s conveyor belt some 1700 feet down. “Falling risk” it says on the barriers around it. After that is hard to follow trail to the ford of Williams Fork. There’s two fords, not sure why the trail is easy enough to the second, but not after that. There was a mighty gash through the trail just after the ford and maybe that’s the problem. Won’t lie, it was hard to cross.

And then I was done, but I kept coming back to the area while l was editing in the Leadville area. The CDT was only sort of following the trail on the ground in that way a GPS does. Now way over here, now a little over there, skipping the corners. Plus a lot of it was named for the short trail that connects a pass to another trail. I fixed the names and tried to add the trails that go off at various places. They aren’t getting much use and I wasn’t able mostly. One had a track, which is always nice. It got to the Saint Louis Divide Trail and I had more attempts at it, but I just can’t get it. The part I got from Darling Creek went north of Saint Louis Peak although USGS says south. The current digital FS map seems to agree with me although the quads echo the USGS line.

I also went over to Evelyn Creek and worked on trails around there. The only thing mapped was following the empty space in the green on the FS topo, which isn’t where the trail goes and only about half of it. It’s lots better now.

I think I’m doing all this extra because I sort of want to hike the area again. I want that Saint Louis Divide. It got a piece marked up by Evelyn too. But I’m not sure is is worth it to mark things up where I haven’t actually hiked. Also, I should learn how to use these lines on the current digital map hosted on Esri. The FS data is usually public domain, so allowed.