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The Fly hike takes you to the summit of a12,000 foot peak located in the rugged Gore Range of Central Colorado. This hike is accessed via the Booth Lake trail in the Eagles Nest Wilderness in Vail, Colorado. There is no defined trail up to this infrequently hiked mountain, so once you reach Booth Lake, it is really a choose your own adventure situation. Most routes up to the summit will involve Class 3 and 4 hiking and scrambling and all will lines involve loose rocks and gravel.

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The Fly Hike Quick Facts

The Fly Hike Trail Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)

Distance: 12.8 miles RT

Elevation Start: 8,437 ft

Summit: 12,558 ft

Total Elevation Gain: 4,000 ft

Estimated Time to Complete: 6-8 Hours (2-3 Hours to Booth Lake, 1-2 Hours to Summit, 1-2 Hours down, 1-2 Hours back to trailhead)

Difficulty: Difficult (Mentally Strenuous) What does this mean?

Class: Class 3/4 – depending on the route you take

Season: July – October (I would not recommend hiking outside of this period unless you have significant mountaineering experience)

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Directions to The Fly

Trailhead: Booth Falls

Getting Here: When you do internet research about climbing The Fly (or The Spider for that matter), there is a serious lack of information. Hello Virtual Sherpa. I climbed The Fly via the Booth Falls trail and parking area, although there are other ways to potentially climb The Fly. To get to Booth Falls TH, take exit 180 off I-70 and turn on Frontage Road. Follow this for about a mile until you reach Booth Falls Road on your right. The trailhead starts at the left corner towards the back of the parking lot. 

Parking: The most common way to access The Fly is via the Booth Falls trail and trailhead. Booth falls has a small parking lot that can fit about 10-12 cars, but whoever drew the lines for the lot was clearly on Jenny Craig because they are very slim spots. One side of the lot has a sign for 3 hour parking while the other has a sign for parking 7AM – 11PM. Parking is free and there are no restrooms at the lot. If this lot is full, you can park along Frontage Road about 5-10 minute walk from the trailhead. Technically speaking, if you are going to camp up near Booth Lake (or anywhere in the area), you are supposed to park down at Frontage Road. However, I am BAMF idiot and decided to roll the dice and park at Booth Falls lot. I did not receive a ticket, but I fully expect to get one soon because of the bad karma.

Summary

Dogs: Please don’t bring your dog on this hike. Its hard enough for humans to scramble along this ridgeline and undefined trail, don’t submit your four legged friend to this.

Camping: Camping is allowed the entire length of the trail all the way up to Booth Lake. Most of these spots do not involve true campsites. Be sure to follow the standard camping rules (pack in/pack out, leave no trace, keep fires under control, bury your human waste etc.)

Make it a Loop: The Fly is an out and back hike, but depending on the route you take from Booth Lake, it is very possible to make a lollipop loop on the ridge line. If you are feeling really ambitious, you can pair The Fly with The Spider which is located about 1,000 feet to the north west of The Fly’s summit. Note: This was my original plan, but I underestimated the amount of scrambling needed to tackle both peaks and ran out of time/energy.  

Trail X Factors: Lack of Trail to Summit

I know this section is titled “Trail X Factors” and it is somewhat ironic that the X-factor is the lack of trail altogether. Once you reach Booth Lake, you are on your own getting up to the summit of The Fly. If you look at my Garmin route, I would recommend taking the right part of the route up and down unless you want to do serious Class 3 and 4 scrambling along the ridge line. Speaking of steep drops, you should feel comfortable using your hands and feet to scale up and down rocks because regardless of your route to the summit of The Fly, you will have to do some of this along the way. 

Hike Tip(s): The Fly hike has a large section of scrambling, depending on the route you take up to the ridge line. I would recommend taking a light day pack so that your heavy bag is not dragging you off the mountain in the Class 3 and Class 4 scrambling sections. I would also recommend bearing towards the right of The Fly (if Booth Lake is behind you) and picking a line up in that general area. If you stray to the left (like I did) there is a much longer and more difficult section of scrambling to get to the summit.

Best Views: The views from the summit of The Fly are absolutely breathtaking. Even the scenery at Booth Lake is stunning. Take your filters if you enjoy long exposure shooting because there is a waterfall about ¼ mile south of Booth Lake. Once you leave Booth Lake, I would recommend putting your camera in your bag to avoid it getting dinged up on rocks while scrambling up to the summit. I generally hike with my camera around my neck, but I found that it was just not possible to focus on a solid hand grip and not banging my camera off rocks at the same time.

Our Trip to The Fly: August 2016

The Fly has always had a special place in my heart. I first saw the Gore Range when I visited Colorado a few years back for a wedding in Vail. I decided to hike before the wedding since I had nothing to do and that was when I first saw The Spider and The Fly. Like many peaks in The Gore Range, the summit looked almost “unhikeable” because of its rocky and jagged edges. I knew I would miss the wedding if I hiked the peak that day, (surely frowned upon – especially by Jackie who was standing up in the wedding) but I made a mental note to climb this beauty one day.

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Jackie and I hit the road Friday afternoon after work (along with every other resident of Colorado) and arrived at the Booth Falls parking lot around 6:30PM. Our plan was to hike to Booth Lake on Friday night and hike The Fly Saturday morning. When we arrived to the lot, there were a couple of other cars in the lot and we quickly realized we were not supposed to park here overnight. Quick side note about me: I tend to not follow the rules, especially with parking signs. This has gotten be in trouble over and over again, but once again I decided to roll the dice and leave the car in a spot where it was quite notably not supposed to be.

We hit the trail and saw a few groups of people who were most likely heading down from Booth Falls, a huge waterfall along the trail (post coming in the future). We hiked for a few hours until the sun went down, but I really wanted to camp near the lake. The information I had printed out online turned out to be completely incorrect so after an hour or so of hiking in the dark, we found a suitable place to camp and spent the night there.

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In the morning, we left our tent and one bag and proceeded to make our way towards Booth Lake. It turned out we were actually pretty close to the lake (about .4 miles). We stopped right before the lake to snap some pictures at a small waterfall and continued to Booth Lake to eat breakfast and stare at The Fly which was now right in front of us. I had read that at this point it was basically a choose your own adventure to the top of The Fly. We scanned the area and found a path up the mountain in front of us that looked less steep and more direct than other routes. There were several peaks in front of us and we were not sure which one was actually The Fly, but figured we could just work our way along the ridge line to the tallest one until we could see The Spider in the distance (the original plan was to climb both).

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We made our way up the loose gravel, into a boulder field, and eventually towards the dirt and grass near the top of the ridge line. The footing was not superb, but also not terrible as long we maintained 3 or 4 points of contact. About an hour later, we reached the top of the ridge line and soon discovered we were a few false peaks away from The Fly’s true summit.

I enjoy rock scrambling and love rock climbing, but I will be the first to admit that this ridge line made me very uncomfortable. Maybe it was the 25 pound backpack trying to pull me off the mountain, but there were some serious scrambles in this section of the hike and they were fairly sketchy. Jackie and I made a joke that almost everyone we knew would probably poop their pants just looking at this section of trail, let alone climb it.

It was slow moving along the ridge line, but breathtakingly beautiful and eventually we did reach the summit of The Fly (we knew it was the summit based on topographic maps). The views on the summit were absolutely stunning and there was not another soul in site (good thing because the summit was approximately 5 square feet). At this point, I really wanted to continue on to conquer The Spider but we had spent a lot of time scrambling along the ridge line and the “trail” to The Spider looked very difficult without proper climbing gear so we both decided to call it a day and head back to the car.

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On the way down to Booth Lake, we decided to take a different route to avoid the ridge line scrambling which we had done on the way up. Although the trail was much easier, the footing received an F-. Every single step was mentally taxing because the ground could and would quite literally move from underneath you. When I thought a rock was big enough to stand on, I would start sliding down the mountain on top of it. I was dreaming of broken ankles and was so happy when we were finally out of this section.

At this point, it was pretty late in the day and I wanted nothing more than to be on the couch eating some healthy food Wendy’s. We got back to our tent, stuffed everything into our bags and got into the fast lane of the trail to get back to the parking lot. Not only was I paranoid about getting a ticket, but I kept picturing arriving to the lot and not seeing my car at all because it was towed (You might say I’m a glass half full kind of guy).

About 1.5 miles from the TH, I heard crying and turned around to see Jackie on the ground gripping her ankle. Shit. I immediately sat her up, asked what happened and knew she had rolled her ankle. I tried to wrap Jackie’s ankle or make her a splint, but to put it nicely, she was not being very cooperative. Stubborn meet Stubborn. I convinced her to at least let me take her bag, so my weight went from 220 with my bag to 250 with both our bags. As we slowly made our way back to the car, everyone was asking her if she needed help and why I was carrying two bags. Although we both appreciated the help, neither one of us were in the mood to talk to people anymore so we pretended to not be able to speak English for the rest of the day.

After what felt like 45 hours later, we were finally at the parking lot and words could not describe how happy I was to see my car and without a ticket. Chicka Chicka, yeah! Besides the rolled ankle, The Fly was a fun and challenging hike that I had a fantastic time completing. I was extremely grateful that the ankle roll happened when we were back on the flats of the Booth Lake Trail and not the middle of a boulder field on the summit. I will certainly be back to tackle The  Spider and other peaks in the Gore Range.

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