Our YOLO August

Back in...I don’t know...a long time ago...we invited Brian’s brother out to go on a 4-day backpacking trek with us at the end of August and he accepted our invitation. I hadn’t backpacked since high school (and even then, it was always to a hut or to a place where my youth pastor’s wife could drive to with the food- so I’ve never needed to carry everything you need for life) and Brian had never backpacked, so we were pretty excited.

Come August, we realized we were very ill-prepared for such a trek and began to be intentional about hiking every Saturday and Sunday, including a test-run backpacking overnighter to make sure A) we had all the gear we needed, and B) to make sure we could carry heavy packs up a hill.

Family visits, our intentional hiking, and our backpacking test-run resulted in a very “Epic” August and one that made me fall in love with Colorado all over again. I will say though, living the YOLO life in your 30’s is exhausting.

August, Week 1

My parents came up for a week to explore and see parts of Colorado they hadn’t seen before. We spent a day driving the Western Slope Scenic Byways up the Grand Mesa and back through Paonia and over McClure Pass. We attended the Colorado Scottish Festival in Snowmass, where we saw a lot of kilts and talked to a lot of chatty Scottsmen. From there we went to Maroon Bells and attempted to hike up to Crater Lake until we were thwarted by thunder, lightning, and lots of rain. I also took my parents up the Hanging Lake trail, where we attempted to enjoy the scenery amongst a bunch of dumb, disrespectful tourists.

Moved to CO 37 years ago and finally made it to Maroon Bells!

Sprouting Rock at Hanging Lake, and my dad being told to keep
his chin down for pictures.

sprouting rock

August, Week 2

We knew we would be climbing 4 mountain passes on our backpacking trip so we climbed 3 passes in order to prepare. Lost Man Pass is a great hike; beautiful views, not too long, not too short. Fancy Pass-Missouri Lakes Pass Loop was one of the prettiest loops I’ve ever hiked in my life. I don’t even know how to describe it, and I'm pretty sure these pictures aren't going to do it justice.

Lost Man Pass

She knows how to work it for the camera and also, the wildflowers were amazing.
Thanks, wet spring!

Looking back toward where we started.

At the top of Lost Man Pass.

Duck lips?

These are my favorite. I have no idea what they are but they look vintage to me and
I like them.

Headed back down.

Me and my boo, in my happy place.

Fancy Pass - Missouri Lakes Pass Loop

Since we were on a roll “living a little”, we decided to drive out to Paonia after work the following Thursday to see Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats play. I don’t know if you saw them perform on The Tonight Show, but it was probably the best musical guest performance I’ve ever seen and we knew this would most likely be our last chance to see them perform for free in a small town with a small audience. 2 encores and lots of crowd singing. So fun. Go Denver music!

August, Week 3

Our test-run over-nighter was to Savage Lakes. It’s about 4 miles round trip so we thought it would be a good way to ease ourselves into carrying heavy packs. Holy. Crap. Did I suffer. My legs were screaming the whole way and I got a stitch in my side, preventing me from ever catching my breath, which has never happened to me hiking before. This made me really scared for how 4 days and 26 miles would go if I couldn’t even handle 4 miles. It also got really stormy that night- lots of lightning, thunder, and rain- and I realized I’m not okay with being very far away from any safe shelter in a lightning storm. I’ve come a long way from being so terrified of lightning that I would stand in the middle of my room, crying, afraid to touch anything but...

Overall it was a great time but boy did I spend the next week in full-blown worry mode.

How am I going to be able to manage carrying my pack that far?

What if we don’t make it to the top of the passes before lightning hit?

Lightning! WE’RE TOTALLY GOING TO DIE.

OMG. I JUST GOOGLED WHAT TO DO ABOVE TREELINE IN A LIGHTNING STORM AND IT SAID TO CROUCH DOWN INTO A BALL SO THE LIGHTNING TRAVELS DOWN YOUR SPINE AND HOPEFULLY MISSES YOUR ORGANS. 

WE’RE TOTALLY GOING TO DIE.

Home Sweet Home

Brian said, "You look outdoorsy"
I said, "Do I? Take a picture!"

My hiking pals, at the Upper Savage Lake

August, Week 4

I made my sure my co-worker had our trail map with the places marked where we planned to camp and gave him my parent’s phone #’s so he could call them if we didn’t show up to work the following Tuesday. Then I made sure my parents had our petsitter’s contact information so they could let her know that someone still needs to feed our pets if we died. When I was done being overly paranoid, we packed up our bear canisters and our packs and took off on our grand adventure.

God graciously listened to my pleas for good weather, minimal animal encounters, and physical stamina and we had a glorious trek through some amazing wilderness. It’s dangerous when nothing goes wrong because you suddenly feel invincible when in reality there were SO many things that could’ve maimed or killed us. 

The first night was probably the 'worst' in that there was a little bit of thunder, we were all struggling a bit with the altitude, and nobody slept well due to it being a foreign environment and LOTS of noises all night long. At one point I heard some unusual noises that were persistent enough for me to become concerned. I grabbed my headlamp and turned it on to try and scare any visitors away, only to turn it on and find myself face to face with a porcupine that had crawled under the rain fly and was only separated from me by a thin layer of mesh. Understandably, I freaked out, which only made his quills start to do their thing. Luckily, he crawled back out before Brian could even find his glasses but that meant I was on full alert for the rest of the night, especially when he kept rubbing his quills along our tent. Porcupines. Amiright?

me and Aaron, about to head up the first pass

Tah-dah!

At the summit of our second pass. It was super windy and cold.

The back side of the Maroon Bells. 

Our campsite, the second night. Pretty wonderful.

About to ascend our third pass. This one looked the most intimidating but ended
up being my favorite. If you look closely, you might be able to make out the trail.

Aaron and I. I like this shot because it shows how different the terrain is on either side of the pass.

Feelin' Good.

Heading back down to make camp by Snowmass Lake.

Snowmass Lake is way bigger than it looked, and way awesome.

The next morning, near our camp.

The summit of our last pass- you can see Maroon Bells again.

Where we came from. The pass is just to the left of the tall peak and you can see Snowmass Lake in the distance.

Feeling awesome and ready to descend so we could eat a big cheeseburger and fries.

My happy place is above tree line (as long as there is no lightning) and spending 4 days at my favorite altitudes was a true gift. We would stop to catch our breath on the steep hills and Brian would say “I’d tell you to go to your happy place, but you’re already there”. Yep.