413. A Grand Little Lake for a Farmers' Market Picnic
Probably not the place RTRW would have expected her Grand Lake Farmers' Market stamp to end up, but a wonderful day hike and grand spot for an alpine lake picnic, if you're prepared for the elevation!

Before presenting the clue for this box, I would just like to give a little historical background, so that the situation that resulted from another box with an RTRW stamp that we planted in the big state of Colorado many years ago doesn't happen with this box, too!

The box in question was the one we called "Animas Overlook", which we planted while out from RI exploring the southwestern corner of CO between volunteer trail work projects along the Continental Divide in CO and NM in the summer of 2002. It was the first box planted in the Durango area, on a little trail we found out about from a "best children's hikes" book, so we actually thought it was too short for a letterbox hike back then when at least a mile for a box was more the norm. But, by spacing it about halfway around the loop, we hoped it would stand as its own little adventure, and other planters who came later would have hundreds of miles of other trails in the area to choose from.

Well, imagine our surprise when we found out recently that there were now nearly a dozen other boxes on that very same little 2/3 mile loop that we had originally planted on, and that not only the intent of our box (to have folks hike the one little loop to find one box and enjoy the view), but our actual little box with RTRW's lovely stamp had gone "lost in the shuffle", too! One of the newer planters, either completely unaware of the real letterboxing history or trying to rewrite it, even suggested that this was a place started by Coloradans to show off their stamps - something that couldn't be much further removed from the truth for us Rhode Islanders and how we view letterboxing as being far more about going on individualized adventures than just accumulating stamps!

Now, I suppose it's one thing if a particular person actually wanted to have 40 boxes planted on a half mile loop of their own choosing and actively encouraged others to contribute boxes to be planted there, as Esmerelda did on Mt. Doom, and others have done in other places. However, I'm sure there are many planters who would be rather appalled to find a path that they had chosen to showcase an individual hike and box suddenly inundated with dozens of boxes! (I wonder, for example, how Jay Drew might feel if 40 other boxes were to appear on the way to his original box near Fourmile Falls, or if 14 boxes got strewn like crumbs on the way to a "fourteener" meant to showcase just one?)

Even in as tiny a state as RI, folks have always been pretty sensitive to maintaining the integrity of other people's planting areas and intentions, so this type of "overcrowding" (or "poaching", as we've heard it called in MA), generally does not occur. (except, of course, in the rare case where people who "haven't done their homework" plant a new box right next to a long pre-existing mystery box!;-) So, it is somewhat mind-boggling for us to think that people in such a huge state as Colorado, with so many thousands of miles of as yet unboxed trails, might feel the need to resort to "claim jumping"!

Anyway, we've tried to look on what happened at Animas Overlook as simply the tendency of some folks starting out to "copy-cat", not only location, but even clue and placement style. (Our original box was keyed to a sign, so I guess they figured all the other signs just had to get boxes, too!:-) And of course we've heard that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", so in the logbooks we've tried to be gracious about all the "add-ons" to that by now very overpopulated little trail! But, in truth, we'd really prefer for folks to go find their own trails or mountains to plant on, so this time we're saying it right out: at least for this particular 3-mile section of CDT (and there are over 3,000 other miles still to plant on, so there's no need to worry about running out of stamping space!), please keep only this one box up at the lake as a "destination letterbox hike" in memory of "Wanda and Her Man" (you'll get the joke when you're in the right gulch and in the proper frame of mind!;-)

Anyway, to find the starting place for this hike, you need to find the route that is currently being used for the Continental Divide Trail to cross a major highway east of a presidential tunnel. Indeed, there is practically nothing else at this exit except the CDT trailhead, a large parking lot and the kiosk with my picture in its frame mentioned in another letterbox clue, which was near where we had left this box as a "drive-by" in 2009!

Well, once again after my volunteer trail projects in 2010, I found that I wasn't going to have enough time to swing up to Grand Lake to drop off this box on my way home to RI. However, I did have just enough time to "bump the box upstairs" on a 3-mile climb up to a lovely alpine lake on a piece of trail that is actually one of the "show pieces" of the CDT. Yes, it starts out right behind the kiosk, wide and noisy, being so close to the heavy traffic, but before you know it, you are ascending quietly through the aspens, staying left at two marked junctions, and topping out to a view of the lake in a big cirque before you.

From this first view of the lake, continue towards the "Y" divergence of trail just before the lake and just after a huge chunky pinkish boulder on the left. Stop at the next large boulder directly on the right side of the trail, and sit on the low flat rock by its left side that points 285* towards the lake. Look down to the right of the adjoining big boulder to see how several small rocks fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. After noting their position, remove 3 or 4 of them to reveal the light blue letterbox below. Enjoy a picnic at this idyllic spot and replace the box as found, before heading back down 3 miles to your car!

Happy Trails!

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