On my first evening at my campsite, I was surprised by how many mosquitos there were, and by the enormous size of them. I battled through them to heat up and eat my dinner, and then fled into my tent. You can cover yourself in mosquito repellant and for the most part stop them biting you, but it doesn't stop them trying: you still have them buzzing constantly around your face and in your ears. I also discovered that these ones are big enough to be pretty good at getting at you through a layer of clothing. I was as well covered as I could be in the mornings and evenings - I didn't have long trousers with me, unfortunately, but I had socks pulled up to meet the cropped ones I'd put in as an afterthought (and in which I ended up spending three days and nights in my attempt to stay both unbitten and warm enough at night - they looked pretty nasty by the time I came home), and I had a long-sleeved t-shirt, but I still ended up with a good crop of itchy bites, mostly where they'd got at my ankles through my socks. We have West Nile virus here, so you're supposed to try to avoid this happening. I don't seem to be going down with anything yet, though.
I foolishly thought that everything would be better in the morning, but when I got up and tried to make my morning coffee there seemed to be just as many active mosquitos, and also large numbers of enormous stripy-eyed flies buzzing around. I stood there swatting things away from my face and thought - this is supposed to be fun. People do this for pleasure. I thought - if the whole of Colorado is like this in summer, then my camping career is going to be very short-lived. I've been assured since that it's not, though. I'm glad to hear it, because I've lived in some pretty mosquito-infested places in my life and I've never seen anything like this. The rangers at the visitor center, which I went back to that morning, told me that they were having a particularly bad year for them because it had been unusually wet (and it seems quite a wet place, by Colorado standards - a lot of lakes, rivers and streams, a lot of moist willowy places at the bottom of the park which are presumably what makes it so good as a moose habitat - see photo below) . In the whole time I was there, in fact, the only times I was free of the mosquitos were when I was on high open hillside at the top of one of my hikes, and when I got up at 5:30 on the third morning.
I foolishly thought that everything would be better in the morning, but when I got up and tried to make my morning coffee there seemed to be just as many active mosquitos, and also large numbers of enormous stripy-eyed flies buzzing around. I stood there swatting things away from my face and thought - this is supposed to be fun. People do this for pleasure. I thought - if the whole of Colorado is like this in summer, then my camping career is going to be very short-lived. I've been assured since that it's not, though. I'm glad to hear it, because I've lived in some pretty mosquito-infested places in my life and I've never seen anything like this. The rangers at the visitor center, which I went back to that morning, told me that they were having a particularly bad year for them because it had been unusually wet (and it seems quite a wet place, by Colorado standards - a lot of lakes, rivers and streams, a lot of moist willowy places at the bottom of the park which are presumably what makes it so good as a moose habitat - see photo below) . In the whole time I was there, in fact, the only times I was free of the mosquitos were when I was on high open hillside at the top of one of my hikes, and when I got up at 5:30 on the third morning.
The mosquitos, and the cold at night in my new 30˚F sleeping bag (it didn't get anywhere near so cold, but I woke up freezing every night), were the downsides of the trip. There was much good stuff to make up for it, though. At dusk on my first night, as I sat sheltering in my tent, I heard the strange trilling-trumpeting sounds of elk moving through the woods. Then, I heard the howling of a coyote in the distance. In the whole time I was there the moose eluded me as usual, but I saw lots of deer, a marmot or two, multiple chipmunks. On my second morning, I heard a snorting sound in my clearing and unzipped my tent to see what might have been an elk (or might also have been another deer) bounding off into the trees.
The morning and early afternoon of the second day were taken up with driving down to the visitor center, sorting out payment for the next nights, and with generally organizing myself for camping at my site - in my desperation to get out of Denver the previous day, I'd finally shoved anything I could think of fairly randomly into bags, and shoved those bags into my car any way they would fit. In the late afternoon, though, I hiked to Ruby Jewel Lake. It's a fairly short hike - three miles from the trail head, though I added a bit by hiking from my camp site. I did it fast, to make sure I was back well before dark. This is the lake:
The morning and early afternoon of the second day were taken up with driving down to the visitor center, sorting out payment for the next nights, and with generally organizing myself for camping at my site - in my desperation to get out of Denver the previous day, I'd finally shoved anything I could think of fairly randomly into bags, and shoved those bags into my car any way they would fit. In the late afternoon, though, I hiked to Ruby Jewel Lake. It's a fairly short hike - three miles from the trail head, though I added a bit by hiking from my camp site. I did it fast, to make sure I was back well before dark. This is the lake:
And the kind of scenery you're climbing through to get to it:
The next day I went on a more adventurous hike, to Kelly Lake. At the visitor center they'd told me that there was still a lot of snow covering the route, but the ranger I ran into on the road as I started walking that morning (I was intending heading somewhere else entirely) told me that the Hidden Valley path that you follow to Kelly Lake from that side was one of his favorites, and that I probably wouldn't encounter much snow.
It was a lovely hike, in fact. You follow the Ruby Jewel trail again, and then break off near the top and go over into Hidden Valley, first on a path down through woodland to a small river, which you follow for some time upstream before coming out onto open hillside. Very alpine looking throughout, with lots of wildflowers. Finally, you pass over the saddle and find Kelly Lake spread out below you. Very beautiful, and a nice sensation of crossing into a new world.
The whole hike - I followed the trail down to the other end of the lake before I headed back - took me about eight hours. The only large stretch of snow was on this saddle. I was hiking this day in my Keene's sandals with thick socks, having given my ill-fitting hiking boots their very last chance the day before. It might have been less stable than I'd like, but at least it didn't hurt at every step, and though my feet got very wet in the snow and in some of the more marshy patches, they also dried out again in a way they never did in those boots.
This is the view from the other end of the lake, back to the snowy saddle:
This is the view from the other end of the lake, back to the snowy saddle:
There were some people camping at the far end of the lake, who must have hiked up to get there. The lake was very clear, with lots of large fish (rainbow trout?) suspended lazily in the shallows.
Most of the trail for this hike is well defined, though in places it peters out and you have to rely on cairns to find your way. You move to the next cairn, look around for another one, move off again... there were a couple of places along the way, though, where I just couldn't find the next one (some are large piles of stone; some are two or three flat stones piled on top of a rock; some just don't seem to be there at all), and had to guess. I'd stumble back onto the path eventually each time. Once you're in the more rocky places it's especially interesting. You sweep your eyes round and just see rock, more rock, all the same grey-brown rock. And then on one sweep, suddenly something catches your eye and a little part of that grey rock suddenly transforms itself into a signal. It's like looking at a cluster of fat mushrooms and suddenly, as if a veil has been swept away from your eyes, seeing that after all it is a huddle of dwarves. They're very friendly things, cairns.
On my last morning I got up early to try to see a moose before I left. I drove along the road by the river, supposed to be a good place for seeing them, but only saw deer. I thought that if I went and sat around somewhere patiently for a while, I might see one - but it was cold that morning, and I was a little impatient to get started on my return journey too. There was a moose viewing platform at one point, and I stopped there and talked to a man who said he'd been sitting there for thirty or forty minutes. He hadn't seen any either, so I felt better, as if it was me who'd sat there for that time and could now leave with a clear conscience of having made the effort.
I didn't go home by the roads I'd come by - instead, I continued along CO 14 to Walden, then down through Granby, over the Berthoud Pass by Winter Park, and home along I-70 (a much more scenic interstate than I-25, at least around here). In Granby I stopped for a very bad breakfast. My "plain" breakfast burrito arrived covered in green chile with huge chunks of pork in it - and then when I scraped this off and cut into the burrito, it turned out to be full of meat too, so that I had to send it back and get them to do it again. Second time round, eggs and potatoes wrapped in a somewhat stale tortilla, with packeted grated cheese on top, and no salsa or anything to replace the chile... all this along with weak, weak coffee. When I remarked sometime here that breakfast is the one food thing that non-coastal America does really well, I should have said that it isn't infallible in this respect.
There was something a bit cursed about that morning, perhaps. When I'd just left Walden, I found myself on a long and quiet country road between fields or scrub. As I began driving it, I noticed that there seemed to be an unusual amount of roadkill. A few minutes later (this was before coffee), it sank in that this meant I was probably going to have to be very careful if I wasn't to add to it myself. And indeed, just a few minutes later I saw my first ground squirrel at the side of the road, then all the way along unbelievable numbers of them running their mad dashes across the road in front of my car. At some points the road was dotted with them basking in the morning sun, too. Because there were few other cars on the road at that time, I could drive somewhat under the speed limit, brake for the more slow-witted and indecisive of them, and swerve a bit for those in their mad dashes. But then, when I was a little behind another car that had just passed me, one chased another out onto the road just in front of me, curving round into my path... two ground squirrels to avoid at once! I tried to go between them, but failed. I heard and felt the one in front being completely flattened by my wheel. A nasty experience - I've never killed anything bigger than a cockroach - but at the same time a relief that it was so definite, that there was certainly no possibility of having left it twitching in a drawn-out death. I suppose I fairly decisively settled whatever dispute they were having, too.
Most of the trail for this hike is well defined, though in places it peters out and you have to rely on cairns to find your way. You move to the next cairn, look around for another one, move off again... there were a couple of places along the way, though, where I just couldn't find the next one (some are large piles of stone; some are two or three flat stones piled on top of a rock; some just don't seem to be there at all), and had to guess. I'd stumble back onto the path eventually each time. Once you're in the more rocky places it's especially interesting. You sweep your eyes round and just see rock, more rock, all the same grey-brown rock. And then on one sweep, suddenly something catches your eye and a little part of that grey rock suddenly transforms itself into a signal. It's like looking at a cluster of fat mushrooms and suddenly, as if a veil has been swept away from your eyes, seeing that after all it is a huddle of dwarves. They're very friendly things, cairns.
On my last morning I got up early to try to see a moose before I left. I drove along the road by the river, supposed to be a good place for seeing them, but only saw deer. I thought that if I went and sat around somewhere patiently for a while, I might see one - but it was cold that morning, and I was a little impatient to get started on my return journey too. There was a moose viewing platform at one point, and I stopped there and talked to a man who said he'd been sitting there for thirty or forty minutes. He hadn't seen any either, so I felt better, as if it was me who'd sat there for that time and could now leave with a clear conscience of having made the effort.
I didn't go home by the roads I'd come by - instead, I continued along CO 14 to Walden, then down through Granby, over the Berthoud Pass by Winter Park, and home along I-70 (a much more scenic interstate than I-25, at least around here). In Granby I stopped for a very bad breakfast. My "plain" breakfast burrito arrived covered in green chile with huge chunks of pork in it - and then when I scraped this off and cut into the burrito, it turned out to be full of meat too, so that I had to send it back and get them to do it again. Second time round, eggs and potatoes wrapped in a somewhat stale tortilla, with packeted grated cheese on top, and no salsa or anything to replace the chile... all this along with weak, weak coffee. When I remarked sometime here that breakfast is the one food thing that non-coastal America does really well, I should have said that it isn't infallible in this respect.
There was something a bit cursed about that morning, perhaps. When I'd just left Walden, I found myself on a long and quiet country road between fields or scrub. As I began driving it, I noticed that there seemed to be an unusual amount of roadkill. A few minutes later (this was before coffee), it sank in that this meant I was probably going to have to be very careful if I wasn't to add to it myself. And indeed, just a few minutes later I saw my first ground squirrel at the side of the road, then all the way along unbelievable numbers of them running their mad dashes across the road in front of my car. At some points the road was dotted with them basking in the morning sun, too. Because there were few other cars on the road at that time, I could drive somewhat under the speed limit, brake for the more slow-witted and indecisive of them, and swerve a bit for those in their mad dashes. But then, when I was a little behind another car that had just passed me, one chased another out onto the road just in front of me, curving round into my path... two ground squirrels to avoid at once! I tried to go between them, but failed. I heard and felt the one in front being completely flattened by my wheel. A nasty experience - I've never killed anything bigger than a cockroach - but at the same time a relief that it was so definite, that there was certainly no possibility of having left it twitching in a drawn-out death. I suppose I fairly decisively settled whatever dispute they were having, too.
I fear one of the later ones may have been less fortunate. It ran out in front of me, and I thought I'd managed to miss it - but when I looked in my mirror I could see it jumping strangely around in the road. I drove on a bit, and then felt too bad about the thought of it dying slowly, and turned round and started driving back - all the way asking myself: just what is it you think you're going to do if you find it? Get out and try and decide whether it's necessary to run it over again? What if it just looks like it has a broken leg or damaged tail - are you going to take it home? Luckily, I didn't come across it so I didn't have to make these decisions, and can hope that it limped home and recovered. Or that I didn't hit it at all.
Among the things I managed not to kill that morning (and I should perhaps be reassuring myself with thoughts of the numbers of ground squirrels that I avoided) was a large jackrabbit, which hopped across the road in front of me, sat at the side for a bit to let me admire it, and then hopped off again into the scrub. Beautiful ears.
Among the things I managed not to kill that morning (and I should perhaps be reassuring myself with thoughts of the numbers of ground squirrels that I avoided) was a large jackrabbit, which hopped across the road in front of me, sat at the side for a bit to let me admire it, and then hopped off again into the scrub. Beautiful ears.
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