Alpenglow Magazine | Backcountry Authors

Authors Guide You
Through the Backcountry

By Gretchen Bergen

It all started when Deborah Carr and Lou Ladrigan tried to buy a trail book. They had recently moved to Winter Park, Colorado, and were ready to explore.

“We looked at all the mountains and could see what could potentially be a lot of hiking,” Deborah says. “We went to the chambers and forest service and they all had bits and pieces of information, but there was nothing all-inclusive.”

Some of the information was inaccurate, or out of date. Trail heads were hard to find. Signs no longer existed. Lou recalls, “Sometimes we came to a fork but didn't know which way to go. Then we went the wrong way and had to backtrack,” Lou says. “So we thought maybe we should do this book.”

As luck would have it, the government had recently de-scrambled the global positioning satellites so Deborah and Lou could use a GPS (Global Positioning System) device to map their hikes. “When the satellites were scrambled, accuracy wasn't closer than 500 feet. Then they were unscrambled so that the accuracy can be seven or eight feet,” Lou explains. “We try to get within 20 feet.”

Deborah and Lou traversed every hike with a Garmin 12 CX GPS then mapped the information onto National Geographic TOPO! Mapping Software for Colorado. In 2002, after hiking 866 miles in 484 hours, and wearing out at least one pair of hiking boots, Deborah and Lou completed their first guide book entitled “Hiking Grand County, Colorado“ ($24.95). The second edition will be available in 2006. The book covers all USDA Forest Service hiking trails plus much more. Trailhead and destination data is listed for each hike, which you can program into any standard GPS device. “The guide was written so anyone with a GPS unit can have the confidence to go to distant places and get back,” Lou says. The book also lists elevation gains, hiking time and level of difficulty.

Deborah and Lou worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service to ensure the accuracy of the book. Wildlife Biologist Doreen Sumerlin was among forest service staff who helped review the trail guide. Using GPS, Doreen says, Deborah and Lou were able to surpass the accuracy of the forest service's historical information. “I think what's really great about the book is the real precise location of the trails and nice quality topomaps,” Doreen says.

When they weren't on the trail, the couple spent hours poring over the old U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Geographic maps, interviewing longtime residents and visiting the USGS office in Denver to search out Grand County's sometimes elusive trail system. Many paths blazed during the 1890’s were designed to get from point A to point B, Deborah explains. Like the sheepherders' trail over Rollins Pass (Corona) that brought livestock from Denver over the Continental Divide to summer pasture.

The more Deborah and Lou hiked, the more fascinating facts and folklore they uncovered, which they included in the book under historical notes. Deborah says, “There's so much historic value. Old cabins still standing, old lumber camps and wood burning stoves — these relics that are just off of the main trail.” For instance, a stacked rock monument on the Mt. Nystrom trail pays homage to a dead sheepherder. “The story we heard was the monument was built in memory of a sheepherder trying to find his sheep in a snowstorm,” Deborah says. The Monarch Lake Loop has cabins and an old sawmill boiler from the old Monarch Gold and Copper Mining and Smelting Company.

In 2003, Deborah and Lou (who had never snowshoed before moving to Winter Park) published a winter version of their trail book called “Backcountry Skiing and Snowshoeing in Grand County, Colorado” ($18.95). “You can't go as far in the winter but you can still go on most of the same trails. It's the same sport, just a different surface underneath you,” Deborah says.

The backcountry skiing book weighs in at 156 pages — exactly half the number of its summer counterpart. The winter book has more emphasis on Rocky Mountain National Park than the summer version, Deborah says, “because there was nothing written about the snowshoe trails in the Park.” She says her favorite winter trail is Timber Lake. For summer hikes she likes Bottle Pass. “It's just so beautiful up there.” Lou's favorite summer hike was the 3-day backpacking trip on the South Fork Loop. “You go out on some of these trails and it's just you and Mother Nature. We did all that hiking and very seldom would we run into anybody out there.

Deborah and Lou's love of hiking has taken them all over the world to far flung destinations like Nepal, New Zealand, Alaska, South America, Patagonia and Europe. Six years ago, the couple left jobs with the Ford Motor Company in Ohio in search of an active mountain lifestyle and found themselves drawn to Winter Park.

“This is paradise. It's just fantastic living here,” Lou says.

Since publishing the trail guides, the couple has become known as local GPS experts, and many people have bought GPS devices because of the books. People often ask what type of GPS we recommend, Lou says. “For us, the most important feature is the electronic compass.” So you don't have to be moving for the compass to be active.

But you don't need a GPS device to use the books. Color photographs show readers special features on each trail. Information such as level of difficulty, elevation gain, tour time, milage and topographical maps make the books valuable for anyone interested in exploring Grand County.

Avid road bikers, Deborah and Lou made the leap to mountain biking and soon found themselves writing another trail guide. “We wanted to find good maps and resources and found nothing,” Deborah says. “So here came another project.” Since many of the trails intermingled, they created a single Winter Park/Fraser map with trail descriptions, ratings, mileage details and GPS coordinates on the back.

The guide books and map have sparked phone calls and e-mails from all over the country from readers (and GPS enthusiasts) who want to thank Deborah and Lou for the book, share their love of the mountains, or ask questions.

Lou says the most satisfying thing about writing the summer hiking book was accumulating 866 miles and 213,240 feet in elevation in two years. “Like climbing everest seven times,” he says.

“We got into really great shape,” says Deborah, who wore out a pair of boots while working on the book. “Iwon't be in that great of shape again.”

The two trail guides and mountain bike map are sold at local retail outlets like Rocky Mountain Roastery & Coffee Co., Christy Sports, Blue Sky Shoes, Cascades Cabin, Grand Lake Sports and Never Summer Mountain Products, or from the U.S. Forest Service and in Rocky Mountain National Park. They are also available on the Colorado Front Range at REI and Barnes & Noble book stores.