Just because I haven’t written a photo essay in the past week or so doesn’t mean that I hadn’t been getting out for my fitness exercise. I have been exercising an hour or more every day. I did take my camera for my walks in places like through the Pearl Street Mall (in 10 degree weather), to the supermarket, and along Coal Creek Trail in a snowstorm. But photographically those trips were in vain — until today.

Today I snowshoed up to Brainard Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness for the first time in almost a year. That time I did it the easy way — going straight up the road and back for 4 1/2 miles. This is the same road I have driven many times for summer hikes beyond Brainard. But in winter they close the road to vehicle traffic.
[Read more →]

At the meeting of my diabetes support group yesterday evening Jeff asked me if my goal was still to hike every trail in Boulder County.

I laughed and replied, “Yes, maybe even more so. Now I’m even hiking trails that aren’t completed.” That referred to hiking the unfinished Goshawk Ridge Trail last week.

So, perhaps being contrary, today I went back to the trail that I have hiked the most. And it’s not even in Boulder County.

The Emerald Lake Trail is the northern part of Rocky Mountain National Park that’s in Larimer County. It’s about an hour’s drive from here.
[Read more →]

While others toiled over their taxes, I romped in the Rockies today. I put on my snowshoes and went to Copeland Falls in the Wild Basin area of Rocky Mountain National Park on the warmest day of the year.

In Boulder the temperature reached 82 degrees, and it must have been in the 70s where I was at 8500 feet today. While it was a little windy, no one minds the wind when it’s that warm.

But sadly, the snowshoe season seems to be over, while the hiking and backpacking season hasn’t started yet. The snow is too slushy and spotty for easy travel with snowshoes, while it’s too deep to go without them. Several times even with my snowshoes I sunk more than 1 foot into the soft snow.

For some reason that I can’t explain I hadn’t been to this beautiful part of the park for months. While I had hiked there twice before, it was the first time I had ever snowshoed in that area.
[Read more →]

Today Peaceful Valley deserved its name. In the summer the trail passes through two campgrounds that are probably busy. But I only saw one other person on the trail today.

I hadn’t ever hike this trail — and didn’t hike it today. There was far too much snow for that! I snowshoed up this valley to the Buchanan Pass Trail, where the pine forest opened up to give me this peak at one of the Indian Peaks on the Continental Divide.
[Read more →]

Today was worth waiting for. Ever since Karen and I went to the chain of lakes starting at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park before Thanksgiving last year I have yearned to go back to one of the most beautiful places in the world. This was my chance and I took it.

We had brilliant sun and warmer weather today. But the snow up there around 10,000 feet was still more than a foot deep all the way. The trail was often steep, by far the most difficult snowshoe hike I have ever made. But the four hours I spent on the trail today seemed to fly by.
[Read more →]

While today is April Fools, the snow here is no joke. It snowed yesterday in Boulder, although it’s almost all gone today.

But in the mountains above Boulder I found that the snow was from 6″ to 1′ deep, the heaviest snowpack yet that I have experienced on the snowshoe trails. Today I took the Sourdough Trail in the Roosevelt National Forest (TR, not FDR), starting from the road to the University of Colorado Mountain Research Station at 9,200 feet.
[Read more →]

After a dozen days away from my home visiting Karen in New Mexico, I got back home last night. While we made her home in Albuquerque our base camp, we were out and about almost all of that time.

This time rather than flying I took my SUV, driving about 2,000 miles all told. That includes the trip to White Sands National Monument about which I wrote you earlier.

Then last Friday I hiked up the Embudo Trail in the Sandia Mountain Wilderness east of Albuquerque while Karen took care of some errands. It was a comfortably warm day but awfully windy on this trail, which means funnel in Spanish — and the wind was certainly funneling though it.
[Read more →]

“Where is the best snowshoeing in the park today,” I asked the ranger at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park this morning.

“The Bear Lake corridor,” she replied. “The trail to Emerald Lake or the one to Bierstadt Lake. There’s a volunteer at Bear Lake you can ask.”

When I got there, I did.
[Read more →]

The Rocky Mountains were warmer today than Southern California was last Thursday when I hiked Icehouse Canyon in the Mt. Baldy area. Of course, I was dressed with all my winter clothes today, which I didn’t have room to take on the flight to California. Only my nose was cold today.

The weather was glorious. Bright sun reflected on the snow made it even brighter. The temperature reached a high of 42 degrees today at Ward, the town about 1,000 feet below where I went today, Brainard Lake at 10,300 feet. The sky was clear all day.

I have been waiting all year for a day like this. While I had tried out my snowshoes after snowstorms in Boulder, this was my first decent hike with them.
[Read more →]

We got a lot of snow here. Yesterday 6.7 inches fell on Boulder, according to the local newspaper. That’s on top of almost 10 inches in the last few days.

But it seemed like more:
[Read more →]