Category: Outdoors

Nice Weather at Last

Yesterday was warm and sunny, so I went and hiked up the front side of Mt Herman. Literally the front – the trail I was following apparently didn’t go to the top but faded out as the slope got steeper and steeper roughly due east of the peak. It was admittedly too steep for it to be a good idea, but I scrambled over rocks (and through bushes and shin-deep snow) and eventually made it to the top:
Mt Herman Peak

It’s been a while since I went all the way to the top of the front range. Having just climbed to the top of a mountain, the view of Pike’s Peak always puts into perspective just how insignificant everything around it is (picture taken from about 9,000 ft):
Pike's Peak

Also, the view east is pretty spectacular too. There was a brief time when the conditions were right and I could barely make out a distant wind farm, but here’s a view of Monument and the majority of Black Forest:
Black Forest

And because I was playing with the macro feature on my camera, here are a couple flower pictures:
Open Flower

Closed Flower

April Showers

Oh wait, this is Colorado, nevermind…
Snowy Mountains

The incline is just visible next to the tree on the far right of the picture. I wasn’t at all tempted to make this weekend my first hike up the incline for the year.

The lilac plant had unopened flower buds just starting to show up, I suspect it now won’t be blooming this year.

Poor Lilac

Winter Park Trip

I spent the weekend in Winter Park with some friends.

I spent Friday morning snowboarding. That didn’t go as smoothly as hoped (I ended up making adjustments to my bindings every couple runs), but by the time I left I’d gotten the board adjusted closer to how I wanted it and was doing better on some of the runs that had given me trouble. Unfortunately my panorama taken from the top of the Panoramic Express lift didn’t turn out particularly well, but here’s the view from part way down one of the runs:
Ski Run View

The condo we rented for the weekend had a little creek running behind it:
Creek

We went to the Fraser Tubing Hill Saturday morning. I didn’t take any pictures/videos, but a few pictures have already shown up on facebook. Later in the day we visited the Devil’s Thumb Ranch (resort with nordic skiing), but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me and in my cell phone picture Devil’s Thumb itself is only a few pixels big.

Sunday morning we packed up and checked out of the condo, then took a leisurely drive back through the mountains with plenty of stops. The first stop was the Elk Meadows trailhead in Arapaho National Forest:
National Forests

Great view of the mountains from the trailhead:
Mountain View

Pristine snow in the forest on the side of the trail:
Pristine Forest

Snowmobile track through the forest (fortunately the snow was packed down enough we could walk on the trail, unpacked snow drifts were entirely a different story…):
Snowmobile Track

The next stop was the top of Berthoud Pass:
Continental Divide

Unfortunately I didn’t find a great spot with a view at the top of the pass, but we did walk over to the native flora/fauna signs up the hill. The snow here wasn’t nearly as well packed and I ended up with damp socks from snow getting in the sides of my boots when I stepped in the deeper snow.
Pass Shelter