A month has gone by, half of it in the final uphill struggle to the end of the academic year, the final exams, and the grading. I've been free for the last couple of weeks. Or semi-free - I have a paper to write by this time next week, when I'm leaving for a brief trip to Japan. It's hard to care right now.
Recently I've begun to hike, sometimes on my own - fear of mountain lions made me reluctant before, but it seems on reflection that in this country one has a much higher chance of being killed in a traffic accident or being gunned down in some random shooting incident than of being one of the handful of people mauled by predators each year. If I do get eaten, well, so be it. Better than sitting at home and bemoaning the downtown heat.
This Friday I hiked by myself up Bear Peak - one of those overlooking Boulder - by way of Shadow Canyon. Unusually green at the moment, and as with this whole stretch of the Front Range filled with interesting rock formations, as seen in the photo above. This is where the mountains begin, just west of Denver and Boulder. If you turn the other way, it's all flat.
Then on Saturday, I did my first 14er, like the budding Coloradan I am. These are our 14,000+ ft mountains, of which we apparently have 54 or so. People like to work their way through them. I should point out that we're a mile high in Denver before you even start driving into the mountains, so this isn't as impossible as it sounds. The hike I did this weekend was from Guenella Pass (11669 ft, as far as I can see) to the top of Mount Evans (14,264 ft). This time I went with a friend, which is lucky because it turned into a ten and a half hour hike all told, including a climb to the top of the neighboring Spalding in each direction, and I think I might have given up in despair in the willows that awaited us at the end if I'd been on my own.
I'd glanced at the book my friend has before we went, and seen mention of these willows as something that caused people to give up at the beginning of the hike. I didn't see why at the time, since to me willows meant beautiful supple trees that would be a pleasure to walk through. Giving up in a fresh green wood? Surely not. Here, however, it turns out to mean waist or head-high scrub-like stuff that is hellish to get through - thin and springy willow branches without the trunks, so that it is like navigating through a spiteful whippy maze. We did OK on the way up, but on the way down we were already exhausted, and the ground was running with water that had been solid mud or snow earlier in the day, and we couldn't find the main trail anywhere. Well, we got out in the end, obviously.
The hike up was a lot of fun - after the willows, bare mountain side, then snowy areas on top of Spalding, then a rocky ascent at the end. You come out to find everyone else already there - Mount Evans has a parking lot at the top. Here is the view from the top of Spalding, as we're about to sweep round towards Evans.
And here is the view one way from the top:
And the other way...
But the highlight of the day was my first mountain goat sighting. I've been scanning any mountain I've been to in the last four years hoping to see one of these, and so of course the first one I see turns out to be wandering by the roadside just beneath the summit of Evans.
Actually, we did see some looking more scenic on the crest of a rocky outcrop later, but this one was the First Goat and has a special place in my heart.
