Late night sighting by backpacker near Crater Lake witnessed in Pitkin County, Colorado

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For the past several years, my hiking partner and I have been heading out to the Crested Butte area of Colorado for a week-long backpacking trip. This year we both decided to be extremely aggressive and hike over an expanse of land we'd been eyeing on the topo map since our trip last summer. Because of the vast amount of land we would be covering in 5 days, we decided to acclimate so that altitude sickness wouldn't claim us halfway through the trip. We flew into Denver, spending a night in Boulder. The following day we drove to Breckenridge and spent a night there. Finally, we made it to Crested Butte and spent a night in town before hitting the trails. On Monday, August 21, 2000, we headed out on the trail toward our final destination, Snowmass Lake The trip was to take us on a "loop", a 360-degree trail from Schofield Pass, through the Maroon Bells and Snowmass Wilderness to Snowmass Lake itself. We would then hike from Snowmass to Geneva Lake, then down through Crystal Canyon...