Who knows about Colorado NFs and Wilderness areas?

[Son of Liberty]

I am planning on driving out to Colorado in July or early August this summer to do a lil' backpacking in the backcountry:) I would like to do two back-to-back 7-10 day loops from a common trailhead, so I can re-ration myself/group.

Please recommend me a lovely Nation Forest or Park, preferably one with extensive wilderness areas, but that does not require any technical climbing, as I will be with some noobs.

[Nelokjer]

I really like where I live in the NW, theres a lot of hiking area with no real climbing on most of it. Mind you it is the desert, but I love this place. All the wilderness you could ever want.

[J-Beth]

Well I know this is not what your asking but I will mention it anyhow.

The wind river mountain range in Western Wyoming is completely awesome and has excellent untouched wilderness, nearly the entire range is covered by wilderness and the two areas with the most "traffic" are "The Cirque of the Towers" and Gannet peak. If you avoid those areas by like 10 miles you may see no other people your entire trip. I would recommend heading to Lander, WY and going from there. Just get a few topo maps of an area, and go for it, the landscape of the area makes the map reading very easy and it is not necessary to stay on trail.

I figure that since you are coming from either Boston or Ohio, from you "location" that 5 or 6 extra hours away would not really be that big a deal. I find that the wilderness in CO is very nice, although some of the most crowed large western wilderness areas in the US because of the states relatively high population (Compared to WY, MT, ID, UT, NM, AK, etc).

[MickyD]

Colorado is the best place in the US for backpacking. I would check out the Colorado Trail if you're not going to bushwhack, there are some good sections with easy access; crowded this time of year but not too bad.

If you are planning on going off-trail, drive up into the mountains from Denver. Do some planning, buy a couple maps and avoid the San Juan and Sangre de Christo ranges. Those two are hard for me to bushwhack and I'd bet they'd literally kill some inexperienced lowlanders. No offense. :)

[DrGoogfan]

If you're going to Colorado, buy a geiger counter and go uranium hunting!