This had to happen

It was only a matter of time before I started consuming free time with some of my own self-centered blathering for people googling me to find. Well, here it is. This privileged American life consists of mostly work as a transit planner at RTD. The rest is hiking, knitting, reading HOA emails and other white person activities (e.g. seeing 'films').

The interesting thing this week: climbing Snowmass Mountain (14,092 feet) with the best hiking partner ever, Sandy. He shares his water, kicks steps in the snow, makes yummy camp food, carries the really heavy stuff and is supportive when I start whining at hour 8.

We hiked to Snowmass Lake, which was a really scenic 8 mile hike that included crossing a high creek via the "log jam." We made it across without getting wet.

The next morning at 6:00 am we set out for the summit. From the lake it is a 5 mile round trip hike. Here is a photo from the lake of Hagerman Peak with alpenglow.

This 5 mile hike took us 8 1/2 hours. After traveling around the lake (no trail due to snow), we pretty much went straight up the gully on the right - it was really steep. Below is a picture of Sandy in the gully.

After the gully, it was a journey up the snow field that got very steep as we approached the ridge to the summit.

The ridge to the summit was a fun, but slightly scary, bit of rock scrambling - and finally the summit!

Then we started the descent. The down climbing from the summit ridge back to the snow field was surprisingly fun.

We didn't see much wildlife on this trip in general but we did see the expected quantities of marmots, including this one that was very curious about us as we descended the summit ridge.

I am actually pretty excited about actually tackling this snow climbing business. It had loomed large in my head as a scary endeavor but with the crampons, ice axe and a bit of coaching from Sandy, it doesn't seem scary (most of the time). Here is me below, very happy to be on the way down.

After eating and napping (I napped, Sandy shuffled about camp doing various things), we spent the evening lakeside relaxing on a rock and taking in the view. Let me reiterate my feelings of privilege in life.

The 8 mile hike out was loooooong. We did however, spot a few interesting things:

Fungus!

I haven't looked it up properly but this one reminds me of the beefsteak morel we saw a few years ago:

Not quite sure what exactly this is but it was very small and quite bright.