Like millions of other people, I feel more free, more myself in the mountains. A so-called girlfriend even once said that she didn’t like me except when I was out in the woods with her.

Yesterday I went to Denver instead of to the mountains. I needed a massage from my wonderful therapist who sometimes comes to Boulder on the weekend to give me a massage in an office here. But she had been sick then, so Muhammad went to the mountain yesterday.
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Lakes and passes over the Continental Divide are my specialty. I bagged both yesterday.

It was a beautiful but long day and hike. I broke my rules yesterday by hiking on the weekend, because the weather prediction for the mountains was warm and dry and the prediction for here in the high plains was hot, 98 degrees (in fact it was a modest 92 in Boulder, according to today’s paper). Storms are predicted for today.
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In neither meaning of the phrase am I out of the woods yet. I’m still hiking in the forests and mountains. Today I hiked to the attractively name Rainbow Lakes in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.

But I am also not out of the woods when it comes to my painful left shoulder. I thought that I was until yesterday evening when I put on my new backpack loaded with my new tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad. I planned to take a trial run with it today to Rainbow Lakes. But my shoulder hurt too much last night for that.
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Today I took a long drive and a couple of short hikes. Usually it’s the other way around.

My goal was the Crater Trail on the far side of Rocky Mountain National Park hoping to see some Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. I had wanted to hike there a month ago when I spent four days in the Rockies. But the trail was still closed then for lambing season, which was late this year, probably because of the hard winter.
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Whether it was the massage that my wonderful massage therapist, Ranada Erickson, gave me after my hike Friday or her insight, today I had my first essentially pain-free hike this summer. I did make it a little easier for myself by using my fanny pack instead of my day pack that puts weight on my shoulder. I also picked a trail with little climbing.
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My hike today could not have been more different from Wednesday’s, even though a lake was the destination in both cases. I do seem to like lakes, as if the view I get of Tantra Lake every day from all my windows were not enough!

On Wednesday I wasn’t feeling well and I came back from Diamond Lake tired, cold, and wet. Today I am feeling great, hiked six miles and had energy for more. The morning was as beautiful as they come, the view along the trail as lovely as any, and even the trail itself was outstanding. I particularly liked the long stretches over huge rocks so big that they had to post cairns for us to stay on trail.
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Without the inspiration of George Washington I wouldn’t have hiked today. I was inspired by the incredible self-control of this passionate man as portrayed in a great new biography, His Excellency, by Joseph J. Ellis. I ordered this book on CD from Simply Audio Books without remembering if I ever heard anything about it, because an earlier book of his, Founding Brothers was so good.
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When you go for a hike, you never know when something exciting will happen. My hike today was a case in point.

Just as I was driving back from the appropriately name Bear Lake trailhead, I reflected that today I hadn’t seen any wildlife in Rocky Mountain National Park, except for the ubiquitous chipmunks. I had seen three deer running across the street in Lyons, a little town between Boulder and the mountains when I drove through at about 6:30, but that was all. I did get an early start today, up at 5:30 and out the door by 6. So I could fairly expect to see wildlife.
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Today was a great day to get out of Boulder. The local newspaper this morning said that the temperature would reach 100 degrees. So I went hiking in search of Lost Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, hiking from 9,000 up to 10,000 feet, where it was a lot cooler. I found the lake and more.

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Ever since coming to Colorado, I’ve been obsessed with finding the source of its eponymous river. The source is strangely obscure.

A couple of weeks ago when I hiked on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park I came close to the source. I hiked a mile or two upstream from the Colorado River trailhead. That trail climbs for seven miles to La Poudre Pass at about 10,200 feet on the Continental Divide, which I have finally determined is the point where the river starts before cutting through the Grand Canyon and ending about 1,450 miles away near the Gulf of California. It is our sixth or seventh longest river.
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