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How to get there: Take US 24 north out of Leadville to the Crane Park Trailhead shown on the map. Take FSR100, then FSR131 west to Lily Lake as shown on the map, there are a number of back country roads that can confuse you, so go slowly. Drive for 2 miles on this road (FSR131), about 1/3 of a mile before Lily Lake, park your vehicles in the open areas between the trees along the road. You can tell this area because the road really starts to get rough and impassable for non 4WD vehicles, see “West Tennessee Creek”, map notation (P)2. At this point it’s time to put your backpack on and continue up the road, Lily Lake will appear on your left (nice place to stop and adjust that pack and other equipment). The road forks almost immediately, take the left fork. The road continues up much steeper terrain, but you only need to go .5 mile and a beautiful valley appears with rolling meadows and West Tennessee Creek flowing through it. Troops like to camp to the southeast end of the meadow just into the trees, on “West Tennessee Creek”, map noted as campsite 1. If you continue west on the road along the north side of the meadow there are other potential campsites, noted on the map as campsite 3. An interesting activity is to hike west and see if you can make it to the Homestake Mine area: an additional 3 miles (one-way) from the east side of the valley. Follow the 4WD road west, pass the sign for the Holy Cross Wilderness Area in about 2 miles. Shortly after passing the wilderness sign you see a boulder field on your right and farther along, on your right in the trees, you can see the remains of log cabins which were the mining community for the mine. At the end of the 4WD is an unnamed high mountain lake. Above you is the Continental Divide and a beautiful glacial cirque, with many snowfields. The almost forgotten trail to the mine takes off to the right of the lake and leads up into the cirque containing West Tennessee Lake. Along the way you pass many small waterfalls and views of the Homestake Mine area. The area above the meadow is quite wet and boggy, waterproof boots are recommended.
Created on: 2024-09-07 21:42:22
Last edited by: rhall290472 On: 2024-09-25 15:06:25