Leadville to Salida via Leadville and Buena Vista Part 2 (Wednesday July 7th - Saturday July 10th)

Okay, so I admit I panicked for a second.  I mean, I’m about 8 - 12 miles (I don’t really recall) from Buena Vista and it’s a few minutes from being dark and, as fate would have it, it’s starting to rain again.  I quickly pitch my tent before the rain decides to really start coming down.  There is a privy/toilet thing in the parking lot so I go sit under that for some shelter while I just think about things.  I’m stunned that I didn’t get a phone number.  I always try to trade phone numbers with people so that we can all be in touch just in case something untoward happens.  Something exactly like this.  No cell reception anyway, and I know that they’re heading off in the direction of Boulder, they’d said, and I expect they’ll be there later tonight anyway.  I just have to accept that I’ve made a boneheaded move and have to just relax, stay calm, and not make another one.  The humor here is that I’d skipped ahead a little bit to make sure that I can get into Salida by Saturday to get my mail drop instead of needing to spend an extra day (and more money) there.  Money, that’s the thing that kills me most here.  I know right now that those boots are gone and that I’m not going to get them back tomorrow and that I’ll have to somehow get into town to buy some new ones.  What can I say?  Idiotic, yes, but it was certainly a day I wouldn’t trade for anything.  Such is how it goes.  I was hopeful that they’d notice at some point that the things were in the back of the truck and flip back around to get them back to me, but I knew for certain that they were underneath a tarp where their shoes were and it was highly unlikely that they’d want to put them on.

So I got a decent night’s sleep and woke up the next morning bright and early.  I was hoping to catch a hitch, but needed to be prepared to hike all the way into town with a full pack on my back and my camp sandals on my feet.  

I must’ve walked a full 4 miles before I got a ride into town.  There really wasn’t much traffic, for which I do applaud the area.  I knew the outfitter I wanted to get to and where it was located, so that wasn’t a problem.  The fella who gave me a ride was an old lumberjack/mountaineer who lived up in the mountains and was driving down into town for some work.  A really neat guy who still sounded like he was from Vermont or New Hampshire even though he’d been out here for decades.  He climbs in the Alpine Style (I’m not going to go into it, but look it up if you’re not familiar with it even though it has no bearing upon the story except that it makes him cool) and was a man I felt to be just fascinating.  Living a simple-in-principle life doing what he loved and lived for.  He dropped me off at the main corner in town.  I thanked him and made my way up to the outfitter.  I’m really glad that these towns are small.

I understood the outfitter to open at 9 o’clock but got there around 8, just to be sure that that was the right time (sometimes information changes) and to also ensure that this wasn’t some weird kind of day off.  I hid my pack behind a bench behind the shop and walked back down the road to The Evergreen Diner I’d noticed was open and had a big mess of Biscuits and Gravy ($2.99 before 8.30 I think… Something like that) with some coffee and sat outside (it’s only polite to sit outside when you’ve been living mostly outdoors for weeks.  Really, there’s not point in making a point of one’s stench.  Even though I do have to say that I somehow didn’t smell awful, and I figured out why later…) and wrote in my journal some more before 9.  The Evergreen is a weird place, and it’s exactly my kind of place.  One adult working and about 5 young teenagers running the joint. I think some of them might even be called ‘Tweens, to use the new term.  

I got back to the outfitter just before 9 and got a new pair of trail runners to replace the boots.  I wanted to be back on the trail by noon to make some distance and make up for a lost morning of hiking, but also felt that since I was in town I should make the best of it.  I went to the library to do some internetting and then found some postcards and a coffee shop to do some writing before getting a hitch out.  I tell you what, but the coffee in Buena is quite good and they even have their own roaster in town.  A nice town indeed.  I dropped the postcards off in the mail box and walked back to the corner I’d been so kindly dropped off at several hours prior and stuck a thumb out, prepared again to walk the whole way back if need be.  As it happened, the first car picked me up.

Another interesting and kind stranger.  This one was an older guy who was a self-proclaimed gem hunter.  He wasn’t rich or anything, at least not materially, but he sure enjoyed his life living out of his jeep-type-thing with his dog Switch.  We chatted a bit before he dropped me off at the trailhead.  I bid him and the dog adieu and made one final and timely use of the toilet facilities before hitting the trail, phenomenally, by noon.  Even I was impressed.

This day was very cloudy and rainy.  What that means, to those of you who don’t like to read, or more likely, find my writing stifling, is that there is just no way to take as many pictures as you’d like.  For one thing, it’s raining, and secondly photos of things that are pretty are much improved by having light to bring out the colors.  It’s a shame, too, because this day there were flowers just about everywhere.  Much of the trail at this point turned into road where religious freaks have decided to build structure in the mountains in an effort to, oddly, enjoy them.  I can’t decide if these are good intentions or lusting after money.  Either way, I wish I’d live long enough to see the day they all erode back into the dust and rocks.

I finally made it out of the maze of roads that went by Princeton Hot Springs and found the right direction to the trail (an actual trail, I’d like to say).  I sat down at the trailhead to get an idea of how far I wanted to go, and for me this is determined by water sources.  There was one more about a mile up, and then some sporadic possibilities a few miles further along.  An older couple who were waiting for their daughter or someone to meet up with them came around and we chitchatted for a bit.  Oddly, they’d met the weird guy from Seattle with the two dogs.  They concurred that he’s an odd fellow indeed and they felt that he was asking them, in a curious and roundabout way, to board the two dogs for him.  What a nut.

I made my way further and passed a stream not long after and decided to keep on going as it was still sort of early and the weather was breaking nicely and the sun was beginning to lay low in the sky.  Not long after this, it got cloudy again.  What I was really trying to do was climb Mt. Shavano the next day, and to do that I had to get a lot closer than I was now.  Tomorrow would be Friday, and the day after that I wanted to be in Salida by noon to get my mail drop.  Fortunately, my  delay in Buena had been a blessing as I was really loving my new shoes and they were causing me no problems at all.  I liked them much more than my boots and found myself fortunate to make the switch.

I continued on.  It got later and later, to the degree that I thought I might have to stop and dig my headlamp out to keep pressing on safely, and I was fortunate at this point that there was no rain or abject weather.  I finally made it to a creek just as dusk was over, and I stumbled into what would have been the perfect campsite for a nice quiet evening.  It was still a perfect campsite, but there were lots of people there.  

But they were grand folks.  They were a Scout Troop from Dayton, Ohio who were out for a good time.  I introduced myself to them, and asked them if there was a place nearby where I could make camp, and they said there was a good site or two up the hill where the other adults were and that I should make myself at home.  I set my pack down, pulled the raincover from over the top to access my tent and other stuff and looked for my headlamp that, amazingly, was not there.  I was stunned.  I couldn’t believe it.  I thought it might be in the storage net in my tent, so I borrowed a headlamp from a troop leader and pitched my tent and it wasn’t there, either.  I went through my sleeping bag and it wasn’t there.  It wasn’t in any  of the pockets in my pack; it was just gone.  I thanked the guy for the lamp, told him I’d run into a blunder, but that I’d be fine.  I picked my pack up to carry it up to my tent as I did so my headlamp fell out.  Unbelievable.  Somehow it had slipped out of the pocket I always kept it in and fell into a gap where my pack cover was bunched underneath the pack.  Well, it’s a goofy sort of a thing to do in front of a bunch of other people, but I really like that headlamp.  I declined the option to tell them about leaving my shoes in someone’s truck

I made a quick dinner and got the water I’d need from the creek for the next day and hit the sack.  Tom Jones just keeps getting better and better.

I got up the next morning and packed all my gear up as quietly as I could so as to let the others slumber as late as they wished.  I knew they were only going about 5 miles that day and were planning to hike up Shavano the next day.  I was trying to get there today and had about 7 or 8 miles to go before I’d even be at the trailhead.  I had my breakfast and got moving.

I got to the trailhead, secured my pack to a tree, got my daypack ready and got going.  The ascent up the trail to tree line is a lot of fun.  It’s also sort of confusing.  You have to go through some really strange wooded areas and the trail sort of disappears half the time.  But that’s what maps are for, and I, for the most part, knew not to go in the majority of possible directions.  Creeks are awesome for establishing location.  I felt like it took forever to get to treeline, and that after I’d got there that it wasn’t that far to the peak.  I’m guessing that treeline goes up in altitude as you go further south in latitude, but I’d like to look that one up before stating it as fact.  

I was pretty tired from hiking so far in the morning just to get there, especially after the silly day beforehand which turned out to be a big-mile day of around 23 miles or so, I think.  But I was determined and the weather was favorable so far.  A few clouds, but none of them too dark or ominous.  It was just before treeline that I met the biggest moron I was to meet in my life in the outdoors, and quite possibly anywhere.

It was an older guy in his 50s, I’d say, who was a tad flabby, but I’m certainly not being judgmental about  his age or his condition.  In fact, I like to see people who are older out doing stuff that’s physical, and I also like to see the not-in-shape people not sitting on couches eating potato chips all day.  But this is merely a physical description.  It was after he opened his mouth that it all went downhill, even though I suspect myself of casting an aspersion or two considering his use of a GPS device.  The top of the mountain is the highest part.  Every time.  

He and I chatted a little bit and I told him I was going to get to the top of it if the weather held out and that I hoped to be there by 2 o’clock which was in a couple of hours from now.  This was not unreasonable considering that I was almost at treeline anyway.  He told me that such a time was impossible and then proceeded to tell me that he was with his son who was a terrible mountain climber and was having a hard time because he was fat and out of shape.  He then went on to tell me about himself.  He’d moved his entire family to Quebec to study French in a native environment, which is sort of like moving to the depths of Wales to study English (no offense to the Welsh or the Quebecois, but they know what I mean, here.  I don’t think the way I talk is suitable for someone trying to learn how to make themselves clear in the English language, and I know this because I’m so frequently having to repeat myself and enunciate in a counter-intuative way.  I’m just saying, is all).  He then bragged about how he’d moved the family to South Africa to study (I kid you not) race relations or diplomacy or something akin to the idea of working for BP to study marine ecology.  I imagined to myself that he left South Africa after he was run off of his plantation, diplomat though he was.  Sometime during this oratory of diminished ability, his poor, overweight, depressed son arrived which was timely as his father was becoming impatient at the prospect of my leaving before he was able to further berate and humiliate his son in front of a stranger, a thing which he had rehearsed many times and spewed before me in a caustic spray of misused academic jargon and the occasional francophonic tidbit.  If any human being deserves immediate death, it is this man, and poetry declares it will be done in some ingenious method by his son as he seeks to be free of this horrible paternal bond.  Best of luck to you, my friend, and godspeed.

Again, I digress. 

I continued on up the mountain.  I met a couple of people coming down as I was going up, and saw a few people who I think might’ve made a wrong turn as they were going in the wrong way and kept looking back in a way which seemed to indicate bewilderment as to why most people were not going in their direction.  Shavano is a fun climb, and only moderately difficult.  It’s a lot of loose shale, but a beautiful geologic formation in an equally beautiful range of mountains.  The botanical life was different than it had been and there were new flowering species (new to me, of course) that I hadn’t seen yet.  It was getting a little overcast, so I kept up the hill as photos were not going to turn out anyway.  I got up to the ridge and proceeded to climb.  I really enjoy climbing over rocks.  I just think it’s fun.  No good reason for it, it’s just fun.  Shavano is kind of like a giant pile of rubble.  As I study geology and look back on it I think I understand why, but that’s for a different time for me to get into.  After scrambling and keeping a close eye on the clouds as they build up and creep closer I finally made it to the top.  Another beautiful experience.  Those rascally marmots were everywhere, and even on the hight point of the mountain was a lovely deposit of marmot scat.  I find it funny.

I sat up there for a while, wondering if I should walk over to Taubegauche (another 14er connected by a ridge to Shavano), but decided that it would be pushing my luck to do so.  It was sprinkling on me now and it was very cold, and I just didn’t want to chance it.  Besides, I already somehow knew that I’d be coming back here at some point.

I made my descent and got lucky again with the weather.  The sun broke through the clouds in time for me to take some more pictures of stuff.  I saw a mountain goat doing nothing on the snow pack that was in the couloir, and I just proceeded to have a nice leisurely stroll through all the rocks.  I managed to find my way back through the maze to my gear and ran into a familiar face from my ascent.  His name was Elijah, a fellow Missourian.  We hung out for a bit and chatted and I decided to set up camp just down from him a ways.  He told me about a hostel in Salida I should go to, and also told me about a hiker box full of cokes and stuff down where the trailhead hit the highway.  I thanked him, wished him well, and told him to expect to see me in Salida.

I woke up the next morning nice and early as I had to get 7 miles to the highway and then hitch into Salida about 15 miles (?) and then get across town to the P.O. before noon.  I got to the trailhead around 10.30 and it took forever to get a hitch.

I finally got a ride from someone with a rental car who was more or less lost.  He asked me if I knew where I was going, and I said I was certain that it was on this highway in Salida, not any other highway.  He seemed like a nice enough guy, though, just a little off.  Nothing threatening or anything.  I can’t even remember what we talked about, but I do know that I listened more than talked.  I don’t really understand what it is about me that gets people to just start confessing the strangest things about themselves to a total stranger, but it happens a lot.

Anyway, he drops me off on the sort of lame side of town where all the cheap motels are and I get out my  town map and figure out how to get to the post office.  I am now in Salida.

The clouds descend upon me yet again after leaving B.V.  Here I have about 7 miles to go today.

A break in the clouds as dusk draws nigh

Still a ways to go...

On my way to Shavano Trailhead a pair of elk scared wits out of me by tramping through this grove of aspen.

Looking down into the couloir as I ascend Shavano.  Kind of hard to tell how steep it is.

Look up at the summit as the clouds roll in.

Here I'm on the final ascent.  You can see the dip here where you walk up and then take a right to go up Shavano.  The peak you see here (I'm unsure of the name and don't have my maps with me) actually looks fun as you can ridge walk a lot of this area.

From the Summit

That's Mt. Taubegauche from the summit of Shavano.  It looks a lot closer than it really is (remember, you have to come back, typically) and the clouds were enough to put me off going there.

Mt. Antero from Shavano

On top of Shavano, a Marmot toilet.

Possibly the prankster

Purple Fringe (Purple Pincushions)

Alpine Thistle (Frosty Ball - seriously)  These things are huge and I'm glad I never fell on one.

Leadville to Salida via Leadville and Buena Vista Part 1 (Saturday July 3 - Wednesday July 7th)

I get out of Leadville later than desired, but do make it way back up into altitude before dark and set up a nice camp.  I'm a little bit excited as Mt. Massive and then Mt. Elbert are on the the Bagging List.  I have a nice solo evening.  It can take a day or two to feel like you're really back on the trail.  It's an odd feeling.  Sort of an odd tiredness due to having to deal with humans and our humanness.  I wake up on Sunday and get through the pass.  It's quite refreshing, being surrounded by mountains again, and it’s a wonderful sensation that you get heading deeper into the wilderness.  Today I plan to get near Turquoise Lake and do some relaxing and fishing.  

It was an odd day.  I met Swap, a CDT hiker, and some weird dude from Denver with a dubious career choice of being a Personal Developer.  I don't understand how anyone could think that a person who’s chosen Developing Others could be a qualified guide to Life, but I guess some folks are just that perplexed.  I get to the trail head that connects to the CT near Turquoise Lake and rush through all the people and cars.  I want to get a few miles in and get away from all these bodies and perfumes.  It smells like French harem out here.  It was feasible for me to really push and get to the Massive Trailhead, but decide to just have a short day tomorrow.  I want to be well rested for the climb.  I pass a really good creek, go a little bit further and find a good place to set up camp for the night.  It's early yet,  only about 3 in the afternoon, but this way I can go fishing and enjoy the 4th.

I peruse my maps and find a shortcut to Turquoise Lake.  It's an old Snowmobile trail that hasn't really seen much use.  I tramp down towards a dirt road hoping I can find a shortcut through the trees and down to the lake.  I am fortunate to see another fine example of a Venus' Slipper Flower, a sure sign that there's not a lot of traffic on this route.  I get to the road and cut back to find the creek as I was sure it would lead to the lake, and it certainly does.  Turquoise Lake is big.  There are plenty of people out today, but not a crazy amount.  Lots of people fishing.  After some trying of different flies, I finally caught a nice big Rainbow.  I wrapped it up in a wet bandana and carried it back to the creek by my camp where I kept it in the ice cold water to stay alive for a little longer.  I got my camp set up for dinner and got a fire going.  I went back to the creek to clean my catch.  There is something truly amazing about catching your own dinner.  It's a lot different than fishing for pure fun, as you have to consider what you'll do if you don't actually catch anything.  It makes you appreciate the food chain of which we're all a part.  This process of killing something to eat reinforces in me an appreciation of Life.  It also makes you appreciate Death who can come knocking at any time.  But I digress.  I made dinner and slept like a baby that night.

The next morning, an odd thing happened.  I woke up slowly as I didn't have too far to go.  I just needed to get to the Mt. Massive Trailhead which wasn't that far away.  I crawled out of my tent to fetch my food bag, and then, I'll be damned, I somehow got lost.  What a curious sensation and  such a boneheaded thing to do!  I turned around and saw nothing of familiarity, just a giant rock that I kept coming back around to.  All I did know was that I could not see my tent and was not really sure how I got to where I was.  I am not kidding when I say that I could not be more than 100 yards from my campsite, but had no recollection of what direction it was in.  I stopped and stood still.  Not stopping is the error that many people make when they are lost.  They panic and start wandering around and this usually just makes the situation a lot worse.  I think, upon hindsight, that I wandered by this same rock a couple of times before I realized that I was doing something wrong.  Anyway, I listened and noticed that I could hear the creek running, knew that I was on the North side of the trail, and knew that the creek intersected the trail.  I walked toward the creek, went down to the trail and then back to camp.  I was suprised at exactly how lost I'd been!  I must have wandered about a quarter mile off.  Stunning.  I managed to find my food bag (right where I left it), had some breakfast and mozied on.

I got to the Mt. Massive Trailhead in good time.  I went beyond it not too far (it starts off from the CT anyway) about 200 yards and looked for a decent place to camp.  I found an old cabin that was really not a cabin anymore at all, just a few logs that made a sort of boundary.  It was quite close to the creek so I pitched the tent in the decaying structure and made ready for a nice relaxing afternoon and early night.  I chatted for a bit with a few other hikers who were at the creek, filled my water bag, washed out my shirt and socks and went back to my campsite.  I hung my shirt out to dry in the sun along with my socks, put a rock on each one so the wind wouldn't blow them away and decided that it was as good a day as any to change the undees out for the fresh set.  I got my drawers up just in time as a mom and her kid came plodding down the trail.  One of these days, I'll get busted.

Moments later I hear a dog down by the creek, realize it's Boggy ("Boggy stay!" being spoken made it obvious) and I went down to see Bridget, Boggy and her friend.  We parted ways as they were camping up along the side of the hill beyond the creek a bit.  From time to time Boggy would come visit to make sure I was doing all right.  I was doing just fine.  I sat down to a nice meal of quesadillas, sausage, and potatoes and did my reading of Tom Jones and writing for the day.  Tomorrow is the day of climbing up Mt. Massive, and that seems like a great thing to do on my birthday.   

I got started up Massive pretty early.  Beating the weather seems like a good idea to me.  I got up there a whole lot faster than I thought I would.  It's fun in this environment, meeting other people.  Most of us are quite different, but I like knowing that others feel the same way I do about our mountains.  They might be lawyers, bankers, or scum-of-the-earth politicians, but if they don't come out here to enjoy these things then there aren't very many options of keeping them wild without some kind of drastic measure.  Essays and protests are futile.  It take the use of one’s senses to come to one’s Senses.

I get up to the last false summit of the mountain and there's a whole crew of teenage boys and their worn out camp leader up there.  They'd sent a couple of other kids over to the real summit to see if it was the real summit.  "Of course it was," I said.  "It's higher, isn't it?  I'll see you over there."  There was still some quality snow pack up along the ridge, but nothing as bad as Pike's a few weeks prior or the Sangres before that.  The skies were a beautiful cascading blue, changing tone from the horizon to straight overhead with no smog as far as the eye could see in any direction.  This was a vastly different experience of a  mountain than Pikes.  That mountain has been ruined.  And for what?  A lousy doughnut shop owned (or at least operated) by Aramark, a Fortune 500 company who clearly has our collective best interests in mind.  

So I sit on top of the big hill for a while and have my cigarette and get one of the boys to take a picture of me.  It's great seeing kids out in all this.  Sure, they all have their cell phones and so forth but even then they are all really enjoying that they are right there, sitting on top of the mountain with each other, all of them having made the long walk together.  I bask in the sun in the crisp air and head back down as seating gets scarce as I want to make room for the new arrivals.  The weather is beautiful and I want to get as many wildflower pictures as I can on the way down.

There were so many flowers!  I took pictures of every different one I could find, even though many of them weren't "model-worthy", but these things are each and all beautiful to me.  These brave little nuggets of life among the rocks, the rocks splattered with lichens and mosses (also brave).  Such a great, relaxing and simple system.

I get down to camp  and break it all down to move on to the Mt. Elbert trailhead which is several miles down trail.  The idea is to get to camp, get a good night's rest and hike up Elbert tomorrow.  Today was so exhilarating and so much fun, and I want to do it all over again.  

I find a nice campsite along a stream a mile down from the Elbert trailhead.  The map seems to tell me that after the point where I'm at now it just gets steeper and I don't want to have to hike beyond the trailhead tonight.  I'm near a good stream and would love to do some fishing before it gets too late.  Besides, there’s no reason to carry a good catch too far if I don’t need to.

I go fishing for a little while and catch three browns (brown trout).  I put 'em all back as they are sort of small and I have plenty of food anyway, I suppose.  Browns are very skittish and very hard to see as they are the color of the creek bed.  They panic at every little anything and flit back to where they were hiding if they’d been tempted out for some little morsel.  They seem to prefer the reeds and stuff along the banks.  I go back to camp, make my little fire and build a bench out of a log and a few rocks.  I do my writing business and am anxious to get back to the Old Man in the House in Tom Jones.

I woke up early again, packed my day-pack and set off for Mt. Elbert.  This day was much foggier so I hightailed it to the trail junction.  I was actually a little further away than I thought I'd be, but oh well.  The fog was a little daunting, to be honest, and I passed a good number of people on the way up as all of us were wanting to get to the top of this, the highest mountain in Colorado (but also one of the easiest to climb).  I took a smoke break at tree line and pondered the fog issue.  True, it wasn't dark out so I had good reason to believe that the weather was not all clouds on the other side, but I didn't know how dense it was or what might be happening on the other side.  It was really neat, though.  I promise myself I'll turn back at the least hint of lightning and I really do mean it.  I have no problem camping out again for a day to do it again tomorrow.  

A couple of people are coming down the trail and I ask them if the weather's okay, and they say it's beautiful on the other side of the fog and that they'd gone up in the middle of the night to be on top before the sunrise.  I bid farewell to the Gray Jays and get going and after I wade through the fog it really is simply beautiful.  It's a grand thing, being in between the clouds and being able to see it all for so many miles in either direction.  I look over at Massive and there's a huge cloud system over it, making me really glad I didn't try to do that one today.  In fact, there were clouds everywhere, scattered all about, but none here.  Pretty lucky.

Three false summits (at least!)!  They say it's two, but I call it three.  I got to the top of this fun little climb and it's rather spacious.  I chat with others, take their pictures for them and just loiter up here and enjoy the lack of oxygen to the brain.  It's just fun like I've never really had before, at least not like this.

I notice the clouds coming up from the other side of the mountain and starting to form around me and so I decide it's a good time to take off.  Sadly, there weren't a lot of opportunities for flower photos on Elbert, and there were a few I was really hoping to see again.  I will, I will.  By the time I got to the primary decent from the top ridge the clouds were coming in pretty quickly and I decided to make some safe haste.  I cursed my need to go to the bathroom and took advantage of the last rock big enough to hide a person before getting down to tree line.

Of course, there were plenty of people still going up as I was going down.  It's too bad, I know, that so many of these people are on vacation, one of the few times in a year that they get to leave their jobs and doldrums and do something like this, and that it is frustrating to think of getting pushed off by the rain after huffing and puffing as far as they'd come.  A few people asked me if they should keep going, and what do you tell someone asking a question like this?

The rain was really starting to come down now and thunder was starting to roll through the rocks and up my legs with all of it's booming and awesomeness.  It's not getting killed by lighting that scares me near as much as the prospect of surviving it.  I'm moving as fast as I can without running or risking a bent ankle or falling down even though one of my poles' locking mechanism is all of a sudden (of course) acting up.  So now I'm carrying a dead pole and using the other to stabilize myself and trying to not get too wet as I am now within a few hundred yards of tree line.  I'm gaining on a couple of girls and catch up to them just before we all get to tree line.  I stop for a second to pull my rain jacket out of my napsack and catch some psychological relief as I at least feel safer among the pine tree lightning rods.  I'm hoping to hike all the way to Twin Lakes today whether it keeps raining or not.  I mean, that's just how it works.  I introduce myself to the girls and they introduce themselves and we chat for a minute or so.  Lindsay and Brooke.  They're on a road trip through Colorado on the way to California.  

We start leisurely down the trail, me to my campsite and they to their truck, and they ask if I'd like to go into Leadville to watch the world cup game.  It turns out that today is the Germany/Spain match.  I'm not a hiking purist and like to consider myself more of an adventurer and flexible enough to know a good time when I see it.  I pack up my camp in the rain and meet them along the road and off we go, me sitting in the bed of the pickup as the rain slackens and we motor into Leadville.

Ah, Leadville.  We went to Tennessee Pass Cafe (something like that) which I'd been by before, naturally, as Leadville's main drag is only about 5 blocks long on one street.  We sat at the counter and had some food (A Reuben, if you must know).  I'd noticed on the way into town that it wasn't that far to Buena Vista and they were talking about going there today anyway.  Don't ask me why, but I wasn't looking forward to doing the Collegiate Peaks.  Sure, there's some mountains I want to climb there but I just can't shake that they're all named after these fancy Ivy League schools for what amounts to no good reason as far as I can tell.  If they had Mt. Community College I'd at least feel that there was an even shake going on, but no there's not (and no, Mt. Missouri is not named after the University, but the river or something else like that.  I mean, I didn't look it up, but I have no problem stating this as fact.)  I tell them I'll give them gas money if they want to give me a lift to Buena, and they say sure, to just buy them a beer and it's all square.  The game was awesome (Spain won, some of you may recall) and eventually we sped off toward Buena Vista, the destination being the Cottonwood Hot Springs.  I'm looking really forward to this.

We get to Cottonwood Hot Springs in the late afternoon and the lady at the counter gave me a free towel and let me charge my phone while I was there.  These Hot Springs are quite a deal for the money.  It's something like $15 for access the whole day, and it's a nice relaxing atmosphere.  It's not a bunch of yuppies, or hippies, or nudists, or churchgroups.  Just a small handful of people enjoying this water that comes bubbling (well, it’s not really boiling at this point, but it is gurgling and so forth) out of the earth that has not been chlorinated and is naturally unsulphured.  Eventually we take off and head into Buena Vista for more food.  We end up at a Mexican joint and get our meals to go and eat in the parking lot.  My shorts are wet as I didn't have swim trunks, and I'm really hoping they dry before it gets dark.

It was getting late and the girls needed to hit the road so they took me up to the trailhead where we'd say our goodbyes.  I thanked them for everything and was profoundly happy to have met some genuinely nice people.  It can happen.  I got all my stuff out of the truck, exchanged email addresses and then took a group photo as I waved goodbye to them and watched them roll out of the little parking lot and into the final moments of dusk.  What a great day:  Mountain climbing, hitching rides, soccer games, hot springs and good food.

I wondered what I was forgetting and looked down to see that I was wearing my camp sandals.  I'd left my hiking boots in the truck.  Dammit.

On the way up from Leadville

Over the ridge the next morning

From the same point, different direction

Dinner

I've still not bothered to find out what this really mean, but I think I understand it

View UP from my campsite

Me being ornery around children on top of Mt. Massive.  For some reason, all the kids liked me.  I think it's because I made the adults nervous and told the kids funny stories.

On top of Mt. Massive and looking over to the false summit

Fairy (or Alpine) Primrose

King's Crown (or Roseroot)

Alpine Sunflowers (or Old-Man-Of-The-Mountain)

Pinnate-Leaved Daisy, I think

Mt. Massive from the ascent of Mt. Elbert

Clouds rolling in around the summit of Mt. Elbert 

Me being a goofball and general bad example on Mt. Elbert

Thunderstorms over Mt. Massive from Mt. Elbert

Riding into Leadville with Lindsay and Brooke

At the Cottonwood Hot Springs

Me and the girls say farewell