Hewlett’s Gulch Trail. Photo by D. Sillman
(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … Hewlett’s gulch trail
We decided to celebrate “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” (the Monday, national holiday also known as “Columbus Day”) by going up into the nearby Rocky Mountains and taking a hike. This was going to be my first rough-trail outing with my new knee, and I was excited and trepidatious, too. I have been working hard on re-habilitating the knee and strengthening the muscles around it, but the pain and unreliability of the old knee had left some lingering, psychological scars. The good news, jumping to the end of the story, is that my new knee worked great! I was more solid on rocky surfaces and slopes than I had been since Deborah and I hiked the Baker Trail back in 2010!
The place we decided to go for our hike was Hewlett’s Gulch up in the Roosevelt National Forest. This trail is very dog-friendly, so Marian packed up her two wonderful dogs (Gedi and Heidi) and a large bag of dog treats to hold their attention. She also took along six-week old Zofia! This was going to be her first rough trail hike, too! So, six of us (Marian, Joe, Marlee (carrying Zofia in a chest pack), Deborah and I) headed down the Hewlett’s Gulch trail.
Hewlett’s Gulch is in the canyon of the Cache la Poudre River just north and a little west of Fort Collins. The trail follows part of the old Ute Trail which was one of the original, foot and horseback passages across the Rocky Mountains. A narrow, dirt road was carved out of the first section of the trail which repeatedly crosses the shallow stream at the bottom of the gulch. The stream is Gordon Creek which makes a very short run down to the nearby Cache la Poudre River.
Cache la Poudre River. Photo by Wusel007. Wikimedia Commons
The Cache la Poudre River (also just called the “Poudre River”) got its unusual name from French trappers who in the winter of 1820, during a severe snowstorm, were forced to bury (“cache”) some of their gunpowder stores (“poudre”) along its riverbank. The Poudre River has its headwaters up in the nearby Rocky Mountains some 7000 feet above the high, Northern Colorado plains. There are three forks of origin for the Poudre: the South and Main forks originate in Rocky Mountain National Park and merge in Poudre Canyon where the North fork, which originates in the Roosevelt National Forest, joins them further down the canyon. The river is only 125 miles long, but it is one of the major rivers of Northern Colorado. It runs through the northern part of Greeley and then terminates just east of the city when it empties into the South Platte River.
Rabbitbrush along Hewlett’s Guch Trail. Photo by D. Sillman
The Cache la Poudre is one of the few water sources in the surrounding dry plains and, so, has a long human-use history. The Arapaho, Ute and Cheyenne occupied the lands along the river off-and-on for many centuries. These tribes were nomadic and moved into and out of the region under the influence of weather-related and climate perturbations and also under the stress and force of intertribal conflicts.
In 1867, the last of the Native American people in the Poudre valley were removed and relocated to a reservation in central Wyoming. European settlers had begun to move into the valley in the early 1860’s and had dug small scale irrigation ditches off of the river to divert water into a narrow ribbon of cropland. The transferred river water sustained modest crop and livestock production.
Cache la Poudre River. Photo by W. Powers. Wikimedia Commons.
In 1986 the upper 75 miles of the Cache la Poudre River was designated a National Wild and Scenic Run, and 1996 the entire Cache la Poudre River was designated a National Heritage Area. In 1994 after almost 25 years of planning and preparation, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the construction of a biking and hiking trail that would follow the Poudre River from Greeley over to Fort Collins. In December 2008, the 21 mile long, ten foot wide concrete-surfaced trail was finally completed. The Poudre Trail enables the public to see many of the historical places and constructions that were so important in the recent history of Northern Colorado. It also passes through sections of agricultural fields, open grazing lands and remnants of the riparian, cottonwood forests that once dominated the valley of the Cache la Poudre River when the Indigenous people still occupied it.
Photo by D. Sillman
Hewlett’s Gulch and its small creek run into the designated wild sections of the Poudre River. The nearby Poudre is a fast running (even at this very dry time of the year!), rocky stream with abundant trout (dominated by native brown trout). As we drove along the river and then crossed it on a narrow, one-lane bridge, there were also a large number of evenly distributed fly fishermen trying to find their trout!
There are several old homesteads built by settlers along the first part of The Hewlett’s Gulch Trail. These are primarily the foundations of the homes and out-buildings of people who lived in the gulch in the early Twentieth Century. There was a dairy farm here along with a sawmill. There are also several old mines further up the trail.
The elevation at the trailhead is 5680 feet, and the trail rises to 6100 feet at its apex up on the ridge. The first couple of miles of the trail is fairly level (with up’s and down’s into and out of the creek bed). The trail then goes rather sharply up to the top of the ridge on a series of switchbacks.
Photo by D. Sillman
There is very little shade along the trail. So even on a relatively mild day like this second Monday in October, the heat was appreciable. Hats and sunscreen were required, and water bottles were tapped into frequently. The grassy, treeless meadows on both sides of the trail were generated by wildfires that have frequently scoured the landscape. A major fire in 2012 (the High Park fire) took out most of the trees that should have dominated this riparian site. Many of the trees that had survived or were regrowing from this 2012 fire were then destroyed in the October, 2020 Cameron Peak Fire. Many standing, charred, tree skeletons stood along the trail and also along the skyline of the surrounding hills and ridges.
Clematis on downed tree. Photo by D. Sillman
Close to the creek there were clusters of intact cottonwood and quaking aspen trees, and scattered along the trail a few ponderosa pines and Rocky Mountain junipers. Most of the vegetation, though, was dominated by fast growing grasses, yucca and prickly pear cactuses. We also saw a big patch of western clematis and several Rocky Mountain prickly poppies. The clematis were overgrowing some downed, charred tree trunks and rebounding shrubs, and the poppies are said to be a frequent pioneer plant
Rocky Mountain Prickly Poppy. Photo by D. Sillman
following fires.
The hiking website for Hewlett’s Gulch warns of frequent rattlesnake sightings along the trail and abundant big horned sheep on the hillsides. Unfortunately, we didn’t see either a snake or a sheep on our walk. There was a sign, though, at the trailhead asking to pass along any sighting information about a group of yaks and llamas that had escaped from a nearby farm. I would have loved to see a yak or a llama grazing in the coarse, meadow grasses along the trail, but they must have sought out some cool, shady spot to wait out the heat of the day.
We got back to the car after a couple of hours of hiking, watered the dogs, ate some lunch, changed Zofia’s diaper twice (!) and then helped a couple turn their long horse-trailer around in an impossibly narrow parking lot. It was then time to drive back through the civilized sections of the Front Range and go home.