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from summer to winter and back again in one day
On Sunday, Britt and I drove about an hour north to a new-to-us trailhead in the mountains between Silverton and Telluride. It took a while to find the trail, off a jeep road that inexplicably made a loop above the highway (presumably it originally gave access to a mine); once we did, we climbed a bazillion switchbacks through a pretty pine forest carpeted with early wildflowers, until we broke out into a beautiful treeline basin.
Behind us we could see the Trinities, Vestal, and Arrow peaks through a notch. Incidentally, Arrow (and a bit of Vestal) is the mountain in the icon I'm using on this post.
Where we saw elk! A big herd of them! And they had babies! Cute tiny little elk calves! Of course they scented us immediately and scampered up the side of the basin ("we don't need no steenkin' trail") and we sat and watched them leave before continuing on.
We hiked up through the basin, over the ridge (the opposite side of the basin that the elk took) and across snowfields ranging from tiny to immense:
Looking down at a tiny unnamed lake in a basin to the east:
Finally we arrived at the still mostly-frozen Columbine Lake:
And then we hiked back down to where the snow has been gone for months already.
Behind us we could see the Trinities, Vestal, and Arrow peaks through a notch. Incidentally, Arrow (and a bit of Vestal) is the mountain in the icon I'm using on this post.
Where we saw elk! A big herd of them! And they had babies! Cute tiny little elk calves! Of course they scented us immediately and scampered up the side of the basin ("we don't need no steenkin' trail") and we sat and watched them leave before continuing on.
We hiked up through the basin, over the ridge (the opposite side of the basin that the elk took) and across snowfields ranging from tiny to immense:
Looking down at a tiny unnamed lake in a basin to the east:
Finally we arrived at the still mostly-frozen Columbine Lake:
And then we hiked back down to where the snow has been gone for months already.