Our trip last year to Mount Whitney really influenced this trip in many ways. Most importantly, the folks we met while camping at Soldier Lake in the Sierras told us of this cool hike they did in Colorado where they rode a steam train to the trailhead around Silverton. (They meant the Chicago Basin).

Around January this year, I did some research and found out what area they were referring to, the Chicago Basin. It looked amazing.

The second major influence last year's trip had on this trip was to not spend the whole time wearing ourselves out; work some flexibility into the schedule so that we wouldn't be hiking from dawn until dusk every day. That worked out just fine.

The plan was this: Take the Durango and Silverton Narrow GaugeRailway north halfway to Needleton, get off and hike up to Chicago Basin. Establish a base camp and spend two full days up there doing whatever we wanted. Hike back down to Needleton to take the train north to Silverton. Have a quick bite and take the bus back down to Durango, where we had stashed a duffel bag for showering and changing into clean clothes after our hike. We would take the shuttle back to the airport, catch a flight to Denver and then a plane home to San Diego. It was a good plan.

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Thursday morning, long before dawn, the PD and were on our way to San Diego airport, packs full and excited about collecting some new experiences. After a short flight to Phoenix, we boarded a small turboprop to Durango, where we could see that our packs, being loaded onto the plane, had made it with us all the way from San Diego. We were relieved.