Mt. Harvard

There it is, in the far right top corner of the photo above: Mt. Harvard 14,420’ tall. That is Seth and Dempsey preparing for the strenuous hike to the top. Strenuous for me anyway. I mean it is a 14 mile round trip hike if you start from the trailhead. We started hiking around 6:00 am and summited at about 10:15 am.

The forest through which we hiked between the trailhead and tree line was lovely.  We saw some fungus but not as much as I expected.

The weather was perfect. Lots of blue sky with harmless puffy white clouds. This is Seth just before the top.

The hike back gave us views of the valley and the surrounding mountains, and Bear Lake for a while.

After the long hike we went straight to Salida for Amica’s pizza and beer.  My love affair with this state gets better with each year.

2013 July Outdoors summary

My blogging has taken a back seat to other summer activities – tending the garden, making yummy foods, getting together with friends, and, of course, hiking! I haven’t gotten out quite as much as I had hoped but I’m generally satisfied with what I’ve been able to do – as far as hiking goes. Here are a few photos from some hiking trips.

Mt. Audubon

Jess and I hiked Mt. Audubon (13,223’) mid-July and had perfect weather and a great time. Even though the hike starts from the Brainard Lake recreation area, we were able to get a parking spot near the trailhead. Also, for a 13er, the hike is of reasonable length (about 8 miles) and isn’t super steep.

The hike up was stunning as the “diamond” on Longs Peak became more and more visible the higher up you got:

These are some shots from the top:

It was pretty windy at the top, so we got a few shots and headed back down.

Telluride

We spent a 3-day weekend in Telluride, CO and were able to do two hikes!

First was the relatively short (4.5 miles) Eider Creek Trail Loop, which didn’t take us above tree line but did take us through some fairly mature Aspen forests.

It was nice and short for a late afternoon hiking effort, and it did open up to give views of the surrounding mountains.

The second hike was to Navajo Lake. This one was a bit longer (about 10 miles) and did take us above tree line for some stunning alpine meadow hiking. It was one of those perfect hikes where you get a good amount of forest hiking as well as wide open sky alpine hiking.

The destination, Navajo Lake, sits at the foot of three 14ers, Wilson Peak, Mt. Wilson, and El Diente. It was humbling to sit by the lake and take it in. Unfortunately the clouds didn’t lend to great pictures while we were there, but here is one shot from the lake:

Our post-hike meal was tasty pasta and a bottle of red wine at the Telluride Bistro. Food seems to always taste better after a good outdoor effort and this was no exception. We sat outside and listened to the hummingbirds and watched a dog who peeked out of a window over the restaurant and generally enjoyed ourselves.

Next up – August hiking – stay tuned!

4-Pass Loop!

It took three days and two nights, but we successfully completed Colorado’s stunning, 26-mile long 4-Pass Loop. The trip was about 50 hours total and, get this, we had almost *no rain* (it sort of sputtered for three minutes one morning). It was really amazing!

Before I get into the photos, I want to give some basic information about the route and logistics.  There are some useful links below. Note that you’ll need to decide if you want to go clockwise or counterclockwise. Many of the descriptions in the links are for the clockwise route, but we did it counterclockwise, which I recommend (most of the passes are less steep to go up and I think the views are better in terms of what you look up to while hiking).

Forest Service: http://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/whiteriver/recreation/recarea/?recid=40555

Trimble: http://www.trimbleoutdoors.com/ViewTrip/256394

Backpacker: http://www.backpacker.com/january-2011-readers-choice-rockies-colorado-four_pass_loop/destinations/15036

It’s important to know that unless you arrive between 7:00-9:00am and there is a parking space, you will likely have to shuttle in from Aspen Highlands. The Ranger said this was a better option anyway because “critters” had been chewing the wiring of cars parked at the Maroon Bells Recreation Area parking lot. We actually saw a car parked that had chicken wire wrapped around the bottom of the car.

The shuttle ticket is $6 each (dogs are free) and it takes about 30 minutes. Also, even though the parking lot says “no overnight parking,” you can park overnight if you give them you vehicle information when you buy a bus ticket.

DAY 1: West Maroon Portal to Snowmass Lake (about 8 miles)

We started hiking right around 11:00 am on Friday morning from the West Maroon Portal and set out for Buckskin Pass

We were visually pleased by the quantity and variety of mushrooms adorning the trail’s edge. Here are just a few:

 

One of the fantastic things about this trip is that you get such a diversity of ecosystems. For an hour you’ll be hiking on the soft ground of the forest floor, shaded by tall trees, then, a bit later, you’ll be above tree line hiking up a steeper slope listening to the screeching of pika and the chirping of marmots. Next you may be treated to an alpine meadow full of wildflowers and trickling streams. You get all of that with this trip!

After hiking for about 5.5 hours we arrived at Snowmass Lake and found a camping spot. This is a beautiful lake at the base of Snowmass Peak but is pretty impacted and doesn’t have much privacy – lots of other backpackers camped all around. However, the stunning view that we had mere feet from our tent of the peak across the lake was hard to resist. 

After the requisite pumping of the water and setting up of the tent, we got to cooking the food! Now, while backpacking nearly anything tastes good but we did think our dinner was super tasty. We had ramen noodles with sliced mushrooms, diced shallot (from the garden) and a serrano pepper (from the garden). The oniony, mushroomy, super spicy concoction was seriously satisfying. We actually started avoiding the serranos after a while because of the mouth burn.

Day 2: Snowmass Lake to Frigid Air Pass

We were hiking by about 8:00 am the next morning. I had a feeling this would be a big day. On the drive into Aspen, we realized that the US Pro Cycling Challenge was going to start in Aspen on the day we originally planned on finishing (Monday). This would cause road closures between noon and 4pm, which would very likely cause us to have to wait all that time to start the 3+ hour journey back to Denver on Monday. So, we’d all but made the decision to do the loop in 2 nights/3 days as opposed to the originally-planned 3 nights/4 days. To achieve this, we would have to make Day 2 a long day and get some serious mileage in.

We made our way up and around Snowmass Lake towards Trail Rider Pass.

Here are some shots from the top of Trail Rider Pass (12,420’):

In this one you can see the trail that we would take to descend the pass off to the left:

The trail leads down below tree line to a valley that follows a meandering creek.

Here is a view of the valley once we reached the other end:

The entire hike leading up to Frigid Air Pass was bittersweet. My heels started to rub in my boots earlier in the day and I had stopped to tape them up, but every step pretty much hurt and felt like something was trying to saw through my heel. However, every time I looked up and noticed what was all around me, my pain was mitigated somewhat. It was a stunning view!

What you can’t see from the photo directly above is that there were *lots* of wildflowers. I got this shot of an elephantella in its prime:

We were pretty excited to reach the summit of Frigid Air Pass (12,415’) and took a break to enjoy the scenery and lovely sunny summer afternoon.

As we descended the other side of Frigid Air Pass, we started to look for a camping spot. We had hiked over 10 miles at that point and were ready to stop!

The descent was rife with bright orange explosions of flowers – they were like little fireworks:

We found a camp site in the alpine meadow between Frigid Air Pass and West Maroon Pass. We stopped hiking around 4:30pm and immediately pumped water. We drank *all* of our water during the day.

 

Once we pumped water we started water boiling for mac n cheese with jalapeno peppers. I think that might have been the best mac and cheese I’ve ever tasted – so cheesy and creamy with chunks of deep red jalapenos (our jalapeno plant is a purple jalapeno plant and the peppers ripen to red from a deep eggplant purple).

While the water was boiling Seth indulged in the comfort of the soft ground and grass – he laid back and closed his eyes briefly. Dempsey, being very tired also from carrying his doggie backpack, indulged by his side. It was so cute:

We got in the tent early and left off the rain fly so that we had a good view of the night sky. In fact, we woke up to clear skies and a bright moon at some point. Having no rainfly and lots of mesh on the tent allowed us to see the sunrise from the warmth of our sleeping bags:

Day 3: West Maroon Pass to Maroon Lake

Of course, at sunrise Dempsey was ready to get up and at ‘em and greeted me face-to-face:

Here’s a different perspective of our camp site from a small rise nearby:

The first effort of the day was pretty much immediately ascending West Maroon Pass. Seth assured me that the marmots were singing to cheer me on and encourage me up. It was a bit of a challenge with my tender heels and tired legs. But we did it and reached the pass (12,500’) at around 9:00am.

We were very satisfied with our efforts and looked forward to the mostly downhill hike back to the start/finish.

I highly recommend this trip. Many times during the trip I felt like this is what it means to live in Colorado - to be able to experience this kind of outdoors and see the fungus and the flowers and the sunshine and the mountains and the happy dog.

The blah life was a little less blah as a result of this endeavor.

My First Ski Vacation

Yes, even though I have lived in Colorado for almost 15 years, I have never actually spent an entire weekend in the mountains on a ski vacation. Mainly that’s because I haven’t enjoyed skiing until last year. Not sure what changed but I tried skiing again last season and got out about four times with friends who were nurturing and instructive. Lo and behold, I enjoyed it!

So last weekend we packed up Dempsey in the car and drove to Steamboat Springs for a three-day weekend of skiing and a tiny bit of snowshoeing!

On the way into Steamboat Springs, we stopped on Rabbit Ears Pass and snowshoed a short 3.7-mile loop that has no snowmobilers and is reserved for skiers and snowshoers. It was a gorgeous day – sunny and warmish, well, it was still cold but while snowshoeing we were only in long sleeved base layers and vests (and pants…).

Dempsey loved the snow. He jumping into it flopping full-body into fluffy piles that came up to his chest. He buried his head and wriggled around. He ran up and back the trail. It was fun to watch.

Saturday and Sunday were the main ski days. However, Saturday it was actually snowing, which you’d think is a good thing. Unfortunately, it made the light kind of flat and in turn, made it hard to see the lay of the land. There were also clouds and fog throughout the mountain, so visibility wasn’t great in general. What’s more, I’m not exactly a seasoned skier and I’ve never skied in fresh snow in a significant quantity and I didn’t quite know how to navigate this kind of snow. It turns out that there aren’t that many green runs at Steamboat and the ones they have are kind of boring. The blues on the other hand are harder than I’m used to – full of bumps and a bit steep. I only lasted about half the day…we did do quite a few runs in that time though.

Here are some photos from Saturday that give some idea of the conditions:

We spent the afternoon napping and watching bad TV in the hotel room. Dempsey even got to have some quality bed time:

The evening was spent getting drinks and snacks at Laundry in downtown Steamboat and walking around in the snow checking out the snow sculptures. Laundry is a cool little place that is in a historic laundry building and they serve yummy cocktails. We even tried one of their house-infused whiskeys – maple syrup slim jim whiskey.

Since Denver hasn’t received much snow, being in a snowstorm in Steamboat was quite nice – it was like traveling to a winter planet.

Then there were the snow sculptures. I think they were done as part of the Winter Festival that was going on. I got this shot of a dolphin snow sculpture – that’s right a dolphin in the landlocked place of snow.

In contrast to Saturday, Sunday was fabulous. It was sunnier and from my brief experience with the snow the day before, I was able to work with the snow a bit more. Also, it snowed most of the night and there was a bunch of fresh powder! All in all, I had a much, much better ski day on Sunday even though I did fall a good number of times…

We were in the car and headed back for Denver by 2:30 pm but we didn’t arrive home until 7:30. Yep, I-70 traffic added two hours to the normally three hour trip. This was our view for a good chunk of the drive back:

Once again, Seth and Dempsey were wonderful travel partners and my first ski vacation was a success!