Photo Friday: Colorado in the fall

Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending 3 days in Colorado, hanging out with friends of the backpacking persuasion and doing a little hiking. I thought I'd share some photos.

We were camped at about 9500' in the mountains near Golden, CO (home of Coors Beer and the Colorado School of Mines, two facts which I hope are unrelated).

Aspens near camp where just starting to turn.

Food was a central theme of the weekend. That's not surprising--not only is it natural in any gathering of people, but backpackers are particularly obsessed with food.

Something good was heating in the dutch oven.

The member from Louisiana made gumbo.

On Saturday, a few of us went off to try our sea-level lungs against 13,605' Grey Wolf Mountain, from Guanella Pass. This is the same trailhead as for the heavily-traveled Bierstadt Mountain trail, but we quickly left the trail for a cross-country route we had all to ourselves.

Bierstadt on the right, and we are headed left--once we get through the willows and swamps. There were comments from the Louisiana hiker about coming all the way to CO to hike in a swamp. I contended that it was much nicer, because there were no gators nor snakes in this swamp.

Once out of the willows, the climbing began. It was sunny, but breezy and cool, as it is wont to be in late September at 11,000' or so. With the ground cover only ankle high we could pick our route with ease.

Who stole all the oxygen??

Halfway up there was a beautiful tarn.

In the morning.

The afternoon sky and light made it almost perfect. Note the snow on the north face of Bierstadt. There were localized thunderstorms in the area the day before, leaving bits of snow here and there high up.

The only "person" we saw on the climb was a mountain goat. Unlike some, he didn't come mooching, but required a long telephoto.

 Part of the fun of hiking with guys is they can handle the heavy lifting. Big mountains require big cairns.

Not really. That was there when we got there, and no way could they have actually lifted it, nor where they going to try.

 Three of us reached the summit of Grey Wolf Mtn.

I'm on the right in purple, in case you can't tell. It was blowing hard on the summit.

From the summit we could see how wide-spread the aspens are.






























On the way back to camp we stopped and got a closer look at some of those aspens.

I haven't seen very many aspens that turn red, but there were patches of them, some much redder than these.

Just to cap it all off, while flying home on Monday, I got to look down on the area we hiked. The tallest thing with the long face pointing toward us is Mt. Evans, which has a road pretty much to the top for easy 14er-bagging. Just to its right is Bierstadt, and Grey Wolf Mountain is just in front of it.

Not a great photo because of shooting out the window of the plane.

Happy autumn equinox (only a day or two late)!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Q: Quandary Peak

For the letter Q, which I thought I might have trouble filling, I bring you: Queets Mountain, the Quinault River (valley), and the Quilcene range, all part of the Olympic Mountains in Washington state (see "O"). Also Queen Charlotte Sound, which is in British Columbia, along the coast and is more or less a fiord--which I would say fits the "mountains and valleys" theme.

But most of all, I bring you Quandary Peak, Colorado. Why? Because it's the first I climbed that was over 14,000'. Actually, though I spent many nights last summer over 14,000', Quandary is still the only summit I've been on that was up so high.

So here it is, even though as peaks go, it's not really anything wildly special. Except they all are.

Elevation: 14,271'
Location: Colorado, USA. Rocky Mountains, near Breckenridge
Climb: trail walk
When: I climbed it in Sept. 2012, with a large party of friends from an internet backpacking forum. Several of us had flown from sea level the day before. I don't recommend that.

Quandary is the 13th highest of the 53 Colorado summits over 14,000'

Nice reminder. It's a walk, but things happen at high elevations.

Running out of trees. What you see up above is...almost...the summit.

There was a lot of company on the trail. Some of it was better-looking than others.

The scene on the summit.

Our gang on the summit. I can't help noticing that the sign has the elevation wrong.

Literary tie-in: not this peak, but the Rockies of Colorado. Check out A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird. She was a 19th-Century adventurer, who at home was too sick to do anything, but somehow managed to travel the world, ride horses up the Rockies, and climb some of their summits. She wrote a number of books about her travels--what we today would call Adventure Travel (it all was, then!).

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

Nothing Daunted--Book Review

Nothing Daunted, by Dorothy Wickenden.  Biography.

Nothing Daunted is a biography of the author's grandmother and her best friend, who left New York state in 1916 to spend a year teaching school in the wilds of Colorado.  Thoroughly researched, the story makes use of copious family letters as well as a great deal of background research.

In fact, I would argue that the story makes too much use of the background research.  Although all of the information provided does help to set the scene, at times it becomes a bit. . . daunting.  History comes at us from all angles, history of Hayden, CO and environs, and history of Auburn, NY, and of the families of the two young women.  I was further put off by the organization of the book, with bits of the main story dropped in and then ignored through long stretches of backstory and local color.

The book really comes to life when the author brings us to the women's trip West and the life they find in Colorado.  Intrusions are greatly reduced once we are ensconced in the mountains, and begin teaching--something for which neither woman is specifically trained, though they did a good job of preparing themselves in the months before departure.  Fortunately, Dorothy Woodruff, the author's grandmother, wrote lots of letters, as did her friend Rosamond--Ros--Underwood.

Probably the most striking thing to emerge from the story is the contrast between life in an eastern city--it is 1916, and the modern age has definitely begun--and life in the Colorado mountains, where things seem firmly stuck in the pioneer age, including the schooling.  But these women didn't take the adventure wholly as a lark.  They were 28 years old, and unhappy with the lot that society seemed to have destined for them (marry and be a society wife).  Going to Colorado was something of a whim and an adventure, but it was also a serious attempt to find a place where they could make a difference.

What the young women don't know, at least not at first, is that part of the reason that the well-to-do sponsor of the school has advertised for young women from the east is that he hopes to bring marriageable women into the community, which suffers from a lack of brides.  This mission reads in the beginning like a joke, but it becomes clear that this is a serious goal, and a genuine need in the community.

Altogether, the strengths of the book--the genuine story with it's own narrative arc and romantic interests--outweigh the weaknesses.  For me, at least, with a strong interest in the history of the settlement of the West and particularly the role of women there, Nothing Daunted  offers a unique snapshot of a time and region about which I know relatively little.

Three point five stars.