August 2024 was the second family trek into Chicago Basin, with the goal of climbing Eolus and North Eolus. We climbed Windom and Sunlight in August 2023. A combination of bad memory, bad luck, and an overly aggressive schedule affected our chances of success.

We boarded the train in Durango (Picture 1 - train) on the morning of Tuesday August 6th and we were dropped off a Needleton after what seemed to be a short and pleasant tourist ride (Picture 2 - train ride). During the train ride, I discovered the first serious mistake, realizing that I'd mis-remembered the backpacking distance, thinking it was only 3.5 miles instead of 6.0 miles. I have no idea how that happened (dumb!) but it seemed we might still be able to manage the schedule. About 40-50 people disembarked, a pretty large group (Picture 3 - dropoff). I noticed that I'd forgotten the belt for my hiking pants, which introduced a lot of waist-grabbing and discomfort to the trip. See Picture 4 - the starting bridge.

I was with my son and daughter this time and we made good time backpacking up the beautiful trail (Picture 5 - trail and Picture 6 - bridge) to Chicago Basin, which took us 3.5 hours. There was much thunder, but only some drizzling rain, which kept us cool during the strenous backpacking. The camping areas were rather wet, and last year's site wasn't available, but we found a place that was even better for our tents (Picture 7 - tents) and set up pretty quickly. We all fell asleep for an hour or so and then wandered over to the creek to filter water and load up all of our camelbaks and water bottles. After a decent dinner of backpacking meals, we went to bed at sunset.

Then the next mishap occurred! Before we went to sleep, we very carefully hung all of the food and smellables off the ground in a tree, to protect from mountain goats. We were awakened in the night by weird noises outside (even weirder than normal forest noises) and discovered a porcupine chewing on the belt strap of my backpack. We frightened him away (he left in a very casual manner) but there was some damage to my belt strap and one of the shoulder straps. Apparently the porcupine was attracted to the sweaty surfaces because there was nothing remotely resembling "food" in there. We hope he enjoyed the nylon and other synthetic fibers!

We started up the trail at 5:30 am (Picture 8 - starting climb) and grinded up the difficult trail to the lake (Picture 9 - lakes) for some brief rest. I still think that is one of the hardest parts of the entire Chicago Basin experience. Then we headed up the clearly-marked trail to Eolus. After perhaps 45 minutes, my daughter noticed a pretty bad headache developing. We didn't want to mess around with that, so she went back to the lakes to take a nap and wait for us. At this point, we started to feel some time pressure, because we needed to be back at the train pickup spot before 3:00 pm. The two of us continued up the trail (spotting some nearly-invisible ptarmigans in Picture 10 - Ptarmigans in their summer camouflage) and reached (Picture 11 - trail to Eolus) the saddle at about 8:15. We decided we only had enough time for one summit in order to have any sort of safety margin heading down to the train later. So we climbed up North Eolus (Picture 12 - North Eolus), which was pretty fun. Summitted at 8:50 AM (Picture 13 - summit benchmark) and were able to send a quick text message home with some updates. Amazing how many fourteeners have cell service!

We hiked back to the lakes, re-connected with my daughter who'd been able to watch us descend most of the way, and enjoyed hiking back to our campsite. We arrived there around 10:45, took an hour to pack up, and headed down the trail to Needleton, seeing a couple groups of dis-interested mountain goats. It is so much more enjoyable going that direction! We made it in 2.5 hours with some occasional light rain, so it was much faster - got there around 2:15. That was only 45 minutes to spare, so we made a good decision to only climb one of the mountains. See Picture 14 - pickup.

That's number 40 for me, so I will be back next year for Eolus, hoping for better luck and better decision-making.