I’m off from Salida to Denver to spend the Labor Day weekend with my #1 fishing buddy, my 2 ½ year old granddaughter Aly. After some on-line recon, I have decided to take the long way that will let me sample the waters of Upper Beaver Creek below Skaguay Reservoir, just a stone’s throw from Cripple Creek, the historic mining and now gaming town perched at nearly 10,000 feet. The lower three mile stretch at the mouth of the canyon some 14 miles downstream near the hamlet of Penrose is one of my favorite early and late season spots, holding lots of smaller brownies and an occasional lunker rainbow trout.
The drive from Salida starts down U.S. 50 then a few miles west of Canon City veers onto an official scenic byway (C0 9/HighPark Road) that more than lives up to its designation. It’s a perfect late summer day with bright sunshine and light winds. After a leisurely two-hour drive, I navigate my way through Cripple Creek, one of the three towns in Colorado where gambling is allowed, past the gargantuan Newmont gold mining operation, through the town of Victor and start the six-mile descent to Skaguay Reservoir.
As I went slip sliding away down a crumbly, gravely steep slope into Wildcat Canyon, a couple of titles from two of my favorite movies conflated in my head: “ Secondhand Lion” stars in “No Country For Old Men.” That seemed like an apt description of the fix I had gotten myself into.
I could hear my destination roaring below, a remote section of South Platte River about an hour’s drive west of Colorado Springs. But it had been a long time since the thought now running through my mind had popped up…that I might not make it down there, so treacherous was the last half-mile. And me in my waders and heavy wading boots, wearing a loaded fishing vest and toting two rigged fly rods plus a small ice chest. A slightly addled angler by any measure.
Then I came to a ledge that I had to jump down, steadying myself with my wading staff. I landed square on both feet to the chagrin of my aging knees. As I turned around and looked up, I thought how the hell will I get back up that one. Ed Abbey’s similar predicament memorialized in his Desert Solitaire came to mind. He had scurried over a ledge in a dry wash and realized he couldn’t get back up or go down. He ended up spending a night there until he figured out a way to extricate himself. It was some comfort that I had my emergency satellite phone in my fishing vest, but didn’t relish the thought of a night perched in some crevice trying to stay warm.
The hike along an old abandoned jeep trail had started pleasantly enough. The first mile or so could not have been more serene or bucolic, the proverbial walk in the park bathed in sunshine among groves of stately Ponderosa Pine and Quaking Aspen, then an open meadow. The grade was very modest, hardly discernible.
A Walk In the Park–No Hint Of What’s To Come
The next half mile was more challenging, first the trail disappearing in an overgrown brambly stretch that played havoc with my long fly rods, my epithets coloring the air as blue as the Colorado sky. Then it was doing some high hurdles over and hopscotching around numerous downed trees scattered like pick-up-sticks over the trail, courtesy of the devastating Hayman fire over 15 years ago, the largest in state history.
That was but a warm-up act for the final half mile that definitely put the wild in Wildcat Canyon. Without my trusty wading staff to prop me up, I would have either plunged head-long down the ravine the trail followed or just turned back.
I continued my mountain goat imitation successfully, and as I caught my first glimpse of the South Platte, all concerns started to vanish.
