Baker Pass

08/30/2018 By Lostagn
Thanks for the virtual find with the hubby, VeteranTributes!

08/30/2018 By VeteranTributes
Thanks for the awesome virtual! After renting a 4x4 at the Denver airport we headed up here for this long sought after cache. Found with my wife, LostAgn, and our two muggle friends. We should have come earlier in the day, as it was dark by the time we got out of here.

06/22/2018 By GotYour6
Met up with some geocaching friends from Estes Park. We went as far as we could in our Jeep then hiked to GZ. Beautiful area with lots of flowers in bloom. These tiny ones smell amazing! Thanks for placing this cache for us to find!
GC1322

06/21/2018 By EstesLynne
Came up here with BugRanger, Path Pacer, and GotYour6 to have a jeeping and caching adventure. I've been to Parika Lake before, several years ago, but approached it from the Bowen-Baker trailhead and didn't get up to Baker Pass. We didn't quite get to Baker Pass today, either, but definitely got to GZ and then up to the nearby ridgeline to look at the back sides of the Never Summers. It's so interesting to see these familiar mountains from an unfamiliar perspective!

I'm the "girl" on the left in Path Pacer's photo, and I'll try to post a few of my own. The wildflowers were amazing; I don't think I've ever seen quite so many glacier lilies. Lots of marsh marigolds meant that there was lots of marsh on the ascent, but that wasn't a problem. It was a great little hike, a fun day, and TFTC!
Photo

Photo

06/21/2018 By BugRanger
What an excellent adventure for the first day of summer! Drove over from Estes Park with EstesLynne & Path Pacer, and met up with GotYour6 in Grand Lake. We caravanned to the cache at Teller City, and drove the Subaru maybe another mile up the road, where we parked it & all piles in to GotYour6's Jeep. The rest of the road is definitely for 4x4 Jeeps, and GotYour6 handled it easily. we parked at the trailhead & walked the last 0.5 miles to GZ The views were awesome, and got better the further we went. The wildflowers along the trail were gorgeous and filled the meadow below GZ. Got the virtual, took a bunch of photos, then went further up to the ridgeline for more amazing views. I love being on the alpine tundra, especially when the wildflowers are in bloom. This is why I lover geocaching - TFTC!

06/21/2018 By Path Pacer
Wow, how spectacular was this! We started out from Estes Park around 7:30 am, met up with some Jeep buddies in Grand Lake, and made it to the trailhead around noon. It's a short hike up to the GZ from there. You can take a regular car as far as Teller City, but it's 4x4 territory after that.

The weather was gorgeous, and the mountains had just enough snow still on them to be pretty. GZ is a bit below the ridgeline with a fantastic view to the SW. Of course we walked up the extra 300' to get the view on the other side. The cache site is about a mile from Baker Pass proper, but close enough to enjoy this lovely mountain meadow at timberline. I felt no need to actually reach the pass.

I originally wanted this cache to help me meet a virtual challenge, but it's well worth the effort for its own sake. Thanks for bringing us up there! Definitely a favorite.
Pano at the trailhead

The girls at GZ

Pano towards the west

Pano towards the east

08/20/2016 By icezebra11
Baker Pass, what an awesome virtual! It's just so sad that so many people post "Found It" logs when there's no way in hell they've been anywhere near the pass.

I've been wanting to get to this great location for some time and today was the day to finally make that happen. Most people that have actually been to this cache have come in from the west up Jack Creek. I had always figured that would be my approach too but last night I was thinking that I hadn't had a good long hike in quite some time so I decided to approach the cache from the Bowen-Baker trailhead off of US34.

I got a late start this morning, not leaving the house until 7:20 am. It took me two hours to drive from my home in Loveland to the trailhead. I didn't waste any time once parked and hit the trail at 9:25 am. The trail starts out crossing the wide Colorado River valley and then heads up Baker Gulch. There were a few hikers on the trail headed for Parika Lake but I did chat with a couple headed to the pass also. The trail is easy to find and it has a fairly gentle slope until the junction where the trail splits to the Pass and to Parika. Then there are some places where it is hard to locate the trail through the lush ground cover on the way up. Following it on the way down is much easier. But I continued up the gulch and made it to Baker Pass right at noon. I took a bunch of photos at the actual pass and then turned west and uphill to the coordinates for the virtual. I don't know if coloradofun purposely set the location where it's at or if there was a typo but I climbed up and over the continental divide where it separates Bowen Gulch from Jack Creek. On the way up I ran into another couple headed down that had made the hike in from Baker-Bowen also. Eventually I made my way to the required location and shot a few more photos, including one of my GPSr at the site.

After recording that requisite proof, I headed back down to the pass and then down the trail eventually arriving back at the parking area at 3:25 pm, a six hour round trip. My GPS tracks show 14.1 miles and 3466' of elevation gain. I'm definitely going to sleep well tonight!

Thanks coloradofun for luring me to this spectacular location!!!
At the cache coordinates

At the cache coordinates looking south

At the actual Baker Pass

Mount Cumulus

Nimbus, Stratus, and Baker

Baker Gulch

Track and profile

08/13/2016 By john4x4
In the park today with GotWine ad AZ4x4s. Enjoyed the day site seeing and of course caching. TFTH

08/13/2016 By GotWine
Spent the day going though the park along with John4x4 and AZ4x4s. While we enjoyed all the stops and learning new things, some of the hikes took a bit of extra time to get there. Saw different animals, and that was a plus. Thanks for putting out the cache for us to enjoy.

08/13/2016 By AZ4X4s
What a great day we had driving through Rocky Mountain National Park with our friends GotWine and John4x4 grabbing the Earth Caches and the Virtual's, boy some of the hikes are a bit much for this 67 year old guy from Arizona but we made it, These 10 and half hour day keep getting longer and longer but the scenery was well worth it, along with the Elk, Deer, and a couple of Moose, but it was a great day.
Thanks coloradofun for the great Virtual
This gets a fav from us

08/10/2016 By WingsAndTales
It was foggy down in Granby but beautiful by the time we got to the cache. This gets added to the list of great spots I would never have seen if it weren't for geocaching. I'll post a panoramic photo from GZ. TFTC
Looking back down the west side of the pass

07/17/2016 By jonahunwritten
I will definitely be visiting this place again. Thanks for the experience :-)