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.

Dog

Plenty of people have done writings, drawings, and art of various kinds about the animals in their lives – dogs specifically. I haven’t paid much attention in my adult years to these things since I’ve been mostly with cats. However, now I am with dog. Big. Black. Flat-coat retriever dog. He is named Dempsey. He likes food.

He will eat anything – including lettuce and sticks. One time he ate about a dozen maple bacon biscuits in less than an hour. Another time he climbed up onto the dinner table to get at a higher spot in order to eat four sticks of butter (those came back up). Food must be kept at a safe distance.

After I had been living with this dog for a month or so, I became aware of the musings on dog companionship when a friend forwarded the link to The Oatmeal’s amazing and hilarious “My dog: the paradox.” Here are the first two panels:

I highly recommend you read the entire cartoon, particularly if you have dog experience – it rings true and elicits chuckles.

I also heard recently on one of my new favorite podcasts – Bad or Not Bad – that George W. Bush has become an artist and one of his favorite subjects is his dog. On the podcast, I think the verdict was “bad” on this topic because, well, it’s George W. Bush…but here’s what W’s dog looks like painted by W:

Though I have a canine around regularly as a subject, I have no artistic endeavors outside of knitting. And I’m not knitting a big doggie sweater (how embarrassing for Dempsey that would be) and I’m not knitting his likeness onto any article of yarn (mostly because that would be weird). What I have done is take photos of the sweet and needy beast. I have even arranged them in frames:

I have Instagrammed photos of the tennis ball-loving creature:

We have used Dempsey as a model for my ski helmet:

But mostly, I just enjoy having such a loveable though stinky-breathed being in my life – and I mean Dempsey.

Where is 154W?

Things are not always where you expect them to be. 

Tonight I lost my locker at the gym.

After yoga I returned to the locker room and went to the area where I thought my locker was – locker #8 as I recalled. However, my key tag read “154W” and I assumed I’d picked up someone else’s key from the yoga studio floor.  I thought “I know, I’ll just go over to 154W and wait for that person to show up with my key.” 

I walked around the locker room twice and found no locker marked “154W.” I returned to the yoga studio imagining a woman standing there looking down in a befuddled state at a key reading “8W” – I found no such thing.

I went to the front desk and had a woman who worked at the gym go and look for 154W.  She couldn’t find it…She fetched the master key and went to locker 8 and opened it.  That wasn’t my locker.  Right next to #8, sandwiched between 8 and 14 actually, was locker 154W!

This defies all sense of the order of things. Kind of like this “dog.”

This experience got me thinking about looking for things; we can look for something using rational thought and even a solid process in some instances and not find it.  It seems plausible that some things can be found only once we abandon those rational thoughts and processes. 

What I’m applying this to is dating.  I went full throttle into the online dating world.  I was on three sites and had a lot of single dates (you go on only one date and realize that person isn’t your cup of tea).  It made me learn a lot about myself, other people and dating in general.  It was like a crash course in dating.  I had a process, a spreadsheet, and a sense of adventure.  There was some good luck; I found a few good guys.

It was while I wasn’t looking that I came across someone organically (i.e. not through a website). It defied my sense of order but it’s been amazing. I would have never looked between locker number 8 and 14 to find number 154…

Cherries and white wine

In contrast to my last post, this post will feature items I’ve mined from the internet while enjoying cherries and white wine (post cheese, of course).

I’ve unwittingly devoted my evening to viewing random blogs and websites. 

PetaPixel

This website is really for photographers and covers topics of particular concern to them.  However, as you might imagine, there are some interesting photos on the site.  Like the dogs shaking their heads:

The site also had humans shaking their heads but this was less interesting:

Speaking of dogs, I found a website for Martin Usborne that has a section entitled “MUTE: the silence of dogs in cars” and is worth checking out – if you are a dog lover that is.  I have to warn you though, the photos are more melancholy than they are cute.  Here are a couple to get you going:

This website had a page on tree planter graffiti, which was highly appealing to me (the project website is here):

I also came across “extreme sheep LED art”:

Not sure if you are familiar with decorator crabs but the video below gives you an idea of how they work.  They will take whatever is around, tear it up and use their saliva to adhere it to their bodies. Fascinating creatures.

Ok, that’s enough for now. Over and out.

Highlands Saturday

Because there was a film festival to attend and a new restaurant to try, the bulk of Saturday was spent in the Highlands neighborhood of Denver. 

I attended two separate film sessions at the Festivus Film Festival.  Both were at the Oriental Theater, which is a cool, old theater that I had never been inside. 

Session 1: 2:00 pm “Doc Double” – two documentaries back to back.  These were supposed to be inspiring documentaries about the triumph of the human spirit and so on.  The first one was about surfing and helping kids on Bali surf and get money for school.  It was mostly surfing.  If you’re not a surfer and/or don’t know anything about surfing, all the surfing shots look the same.  It was chilly in the theater so I wrapped myself in the tee shirt I won and nodded off.

The second documentary was the draw for this session – “Conquest of High Passes.”  Disabled cyclist traveling through the Himalayas and persevering.  It turned out to be a little dour.  The whole thing felt like rainy day wrapped in a wet blanket.  I blame this on the cyclist on which the film focused.  He was alternately talking about what an inspiration he was and talking about how horrible everything was. 

The next session wasn’t until 6:00 pm, meaning there was time to check out the area.  Lots of house-shops (i.e. little local shops in converted houses), art galleries, and coffee shops.  In one gallery/framing shop (metro frame works) there were to shop dogs – Greyhounds! 

They also had some art by artist Chris Vance that appealed to me.  This is just one example:

Since the break between sessions was so long, there was time to shoot over to the 32nd/Lowell area for a stroll.  More cute shops.  I love this octopus mural.

Dinner was at Hops & Pie (specializing in craft brew and artisan pizza).   The pizza was pleasantly tasty but the beer on tap was really special.  Here’s a bit of the draft beer menu:

I had the Oaked Arrogant Bastard (you don’t get that on tap too often!):

After dinner it was back to the film festival for Session 2: Laugh Track Short Films.  These were much more satisfying than session one’s documentaries.   Many of them were witty and at least half had me actually laughing out loud!  “Chump and Clump” was my favorite – two animated dudes and their adventures at a bus stop!

Afterwards was the last stop of the evening – Forest Room 5 – for a final beer.  This is somewhere I don’t get to very often because it’s in the Highlands but it’s an eclectic place that has various sized logs for bar stools and old farming and mining films playing silently behind the bar.  It is always pretty crowded. 

That was my Saturday! 

Annora

I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm drawn to whimsical art. I don't recall how I came across Annora Spence but I've had a small replica of one of her prints in my office for about five years. I mean it's clear that I'm drawn to animals and bicycles but the way she draws those items and how all the elements come together is...amusing.




She's an English artist that has apparently been influenced by traveling around Europe and in Asia.