Colorado Rockies Walk: The Beginning

Trying to work more systematically through my Colorado Rockies pictures I'm starting at the beginning and going to the end! (Up to now I've just been skimming through them for ones that catch my eye, a good way to miss the more subtle ones). Here are pictures covering just the first day and a half, during which I climbed to the first 12,000 foot plus pass with Andrew Terrill and Igloo Ed through lovely forests and flower meadows.

The weather was lovely and the company and the landscape exciting and invigorating. Big mountains! Wild forests! Huge meadows! Fascinating stories! But the heat and the altitude were energy-sapping for me and we camped before reaching the treeline, going on to the first pass the next day. It was enough. Just being here was enough.

There were beaver ponds in the valley below as we climbed towards the last trees.

Then the world began to open up and suddenly there were mountains filling every horizon and the trail wound gloriously across the alpine tundra.