Hope Pass.  The highest elevation in the LT100 Run Race at 12600 ft.  And you have to do it twice from both directions, on the outbound (at mile 40) and on the inbound (at mile 50).  This is where dreams die and hearts broken.  This is the crux of the LT100 race.  I hope we don’t suffer the same fate of those who failed.

On Tues, Aug 14th, we hiked Hope Pass from the Winfield side, the inbound section of the LT100.  First, we drove all the way to Winfield to see where the 50th mile aid station would be.  Reconnaissance drive.  For today’s hike, we parked at the Sheep Gulch trailhead.  We would traverse the trail from here all the way up to Hope Pass and back, with a round trip distance of about 6 miles and 2670 ft elevation gain.

This should be easier compared to yesterday’s hike at Mt. Elbert.  Don’t get the wrong impression, this is still a difficult hike.  Tree line at 12k, and I was still sucking air on the way up.  But no more headache.  Reached the top of the pass with better breathing than yesterday.

On the way down, I decided to take the trail leading to Winfield, at the junction that separates the path back to Sheep Gulch trailhead and Winfield.  I just wanted to see and feel the race-day trail to Winfield.  This won’t add much to our total distance for today’s hike, I thought.  I was freakin dead wrong!  I noticed something was different when after a mile, I started climbing again.  What?  This was supposedly all descent to the dirt road @ Rt 390.  Am I still on the right trail?  I got worried at some point because this was not the trail Philip described to me.  I kept looking on my phone map to see where I was on trail and where Rt 390 was.  It was still there, alright.  So I just kept following the trail until it eventually reached a junction.  Winfield goes left, so I took that one.  A sigh of relief when I reached the dirt road where we drove by earlier.  But I still had to hike back to the Sheep Gulch parking!  I knew at this time that Philip and Yssa would have been worried about me.  I yelled when I reached the parking lot.  I’m home!  The 6 mile hike became a 12 mile hike!

Later we found out that this is the old-new trail from Hope Pass to Winfield, following the Colorado Trail, originally present in 2012, removed in 2013, re-introduced back in 2017.  

Tidbit.

Hats off to Philip’s sons, Enzo and Noah. Noah was not supposed to go with us all the way to Hope Pass. He was supposed to stay with his mom and turn back to the trailhead and eventually wait for us. But he did the whole hike! Two future trail runners in the making!