We Made It

After a several day trek across part of the country, we finally made it to Colorado.  Our trip out was spectacular with many different experiences, anything from the slimy, slippery other-planet-like experience of the Badlands to watching a snake eat baby birds from a nest in a tree at Devil's Tower.  We have a lot of stories from our road trip, and we have lots of high praise for South Dakota and Wyoming.  If you ever get a chance, take a road trip across the state--you won't be disappointed!

A pic of Devil's Tower, which rises out in the middle of nowhere

As we were heading down I-25 through Colorado, just an hour or two from our destination here in Boulder, we were met with the beginnings of the Rockies, and they looked something like this:

The snow on the top was a bit alarming.  I guess we should have expected it, but the white-topped mountains really hit us with the reality that the likelihood that we will have to backpack through snow is quite high.  We knew parts of the mountains had higher snow counts than normal this year, but until this moment, it hadn't really settled in.  

It may be that snow is our biggest challenge on this trail, but we're still not really sure what to expect.  We went to a local climbing store yesterday to talk with someone about the trail in hopes of getting more information.  The young man who helped us was nice, but I left the conversation quite concerned.  He sort of looked at us like amateurs and a little bit like we were crazy.  He recommended crampons, though I'm not sure Ben and I will go that route--more research needed.  I think the most alarming part of the conversation was that he mentioned avalanches.  He warned us that not all the snow had come together yet this year and the risk of avalanches was still a reality in the mountains.  This had never really crossed my mind, so naturally I left the store with a bit of an unsettled feeling.  When I signed up for this trail, I hadn't intended on a lot of snow-hiking, nor did I consider the risk of large, potentially fatal blocks of falling snow.  

Ben did, however, come home and look up our areas of the trail in relation to avalanche dangers, and he assured me we should be fine on the trail.  I think the man at the store was more a climber than a backpacker, and I'm not so sure he was extremely familiar with the Colorado Trail.  That made me feel a little bit better.  

Anyway, we will continue researching and talking to those who may know something about the surrounding mountains to gauge our need for extra gear and caution.  We also start our first Colorado training hike today as we head up to the Hessie Trail head, somewhere around 9,000 feet elevation, with semi-loaded packs, to hopefully do around 12 miles.