Day 15 - Mountain Towns

Mt. Evans at EveryTrail

EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Littleton, Colorado

Miles - 105
Time - 6 hours

In celebration of the sunshine, I went on a mountain drive! I started off with a late wake up and several cups of coffee before going down to the basement and biking while reading the news and pestering friends to see if I could scare up some company. Everyone was busy so I decided it was a Gnome and Oliver kind of day, said goodbye to the puppies, and started my journey to Morrison.

Morrison is this cute little touristy town just about 10 or 15 minutes from where I grew up, the home of Red Rocks Amphitheater, the Bandimere Speedway (we could hear them drag racing some nights), and a shockingly large number of excellent cafes, quirky shops, and fancy restaurants on a short main drag through town. It is also known for its excellent police force, who reportedly will not hesitate to pull you over going one or two miles above the speed limit. The creek was clearly running a good deal above its normal banks, but was still contained, and the streets were dry and pretty much free of dirt and debris. I had a fun time just walking around taking photos and buying postcards, poking my nose into shops and reading restaurant menus.

I had my heart set on lunch at Beau Jo's in Idaho Springs but didn't want to take I-70 the whole way to get there, so I took CO-74 towards Evergreen. I couldn't really take pictures (driving gets in the way on windy roads even if you don't have to look at the camera and just aim blindly), but the two lane road follows various creeks most of the way, all of which were very high. I saw a couple of bridges that were just barely clearing the top of the rushing water, several picnic tables still half submerged, sandbags piled up indicating where the waterline was a few days previously, and a number of places where the river was carving new ground over grass and around trees. I didn't drive through Evergreen itself, but did see a sign saying that the downtown was now open, although a few parking lots that I passed on the outskirts of town were still sweeping and shoveling mud away from the buildings.

I jumped onto I-70 just in time to hit tunnel construction, they're widening that first little tunnel from two to three lanes each way. I crawled along until outside of Idaho Springs, which holds claim to being the town where the Colorado Gold Rush began (or perhaps the first town to spring up around the area where gold was first found, I'm fairly certain the town didn't exist before that). It's a bit of a bedroom community now, but still has a fun main street with shops and restaurants. A lot of them looked delicious, but it's kind of a tradition now when I go there to stop and get pizza, with the traditional thick rolled crust that you dip in honey for dessert. They've made a lot of changes since I was there last - a whole gluten-free page of offerings and a focus on helping diners make healthier choices were the most noticeable. I tried the "Chip's Pie", a whole wheat crust topped with chicken, artichoke hearts, black olives, and feta, and thought it was delicious!

Next on my list was Mt. Evans. It's the highest paved road in the US, rising to 14,265 feet, one of the 54 "fourteeners", mountains in Colorado higher than 14,000 feet (some people try to climb them all in their lifetimes, others in a year or a climbing season if they really have nothing better to do, and there are a few close enough together that folks try to climb them both in a day). They close the last few miles of the road after Labor Day, and I found out why when I saw snow on the summit already! But until the beginning of October or the first "significant snowfall" they let you keep driving up to Summit Lake, at 12,800 feet in elevation. I visited the same place 4 years ago and they've done a lot to build up the area, with facilities, clearly marked trails and signs asking you to stay off the tundra, and a trailhead for a hike/climb up to the summit. I wasn't prepared for a long hike but I did give it a shot and got to a little over 13,300 feet according to my phone GPS. It was a pretty steep climb, with a lot of scrambling up boulders and such, and the lack of oxygen is noticeable - thankfully I wasn't the only one huffing and puffing. I started to feel a little shaky legged about the time that the trail really became more of a hint of a pathway up a steep slope of rocks, so I decided it was a good time to head down. I do hope one day to go back and climb all the way up (wearing proper hiking boots, clothing layers, and with a daypack of water and food), I bet the view is even more amazing with the sense of accomplishment of climbing to see it. Even what I could see from my perch was stunning, photos don't do it justice.

The day in photos:

 Gnome and a witch in the County Store in Morrison - I know Halloween is coming, but not for 6 weeks!

 Contemplating...

 The creek

 A new memorial on the main street, commemorating veterans and those who died while serving

 The skull and crossbones kind of made me giggle rather than intimidating me to stay away from their hammock chair

 Alone on the highway to Evergreen

 BeauJo's miners look a lot like Gnome!

 Too bad Gnome, it's all mine!

Look how many visitors they've had from Burkina!

Here we go up the mountain - gratuitous scenery photos to follow, none of which do the actually thing any justice, take my word and go visit

 Did I mention that it's a winding narrow road with no shoulder or guard rail?

 A marmoset!

 Nicknamed the Rosary Lakes because they continue down the valley like rosary beads

 From about where I stopped hiking, looking back towards the lake and the parking lot

 The rest of the "trail" to the summit, to be attempted another day

 Woohoo! I didn't loose my balance, my keys, my phone, my marbles, or the skin on my toes or fingers - a resounding success if I do say so myself.

 If only I had skis. And snow.

 It's hard to tell but the road had buckled pretty badly for a stretch so they put up a "damaged road" sign and left it at that. It was fun to drive on though!

 Luckily there were hardly any cars on my way up or down so I could just stop and take photos like this. I didn't get a picture of it but I did drive up behind a manufacturer test car all shrouded in what looked like black matte carbon sheets, apparently it's fairly common for companies to disguise new models and then test drive them up and down the mountain.

 Stunted trees just below timberline

 A little further down and we got into taller pine trees

And finally a mix of pines and aspens, which were just barely starting to turn color. Another few weeks and whole sides of some mountains will be golden.

Echo Lake, at about 10,600 feet