Grinding Out High Roads In Preparation For Long Summer Days above Timberline

While cherry blossoms are likely wilted to Long gone where you live...carpeting your manicured, thrice-mown eastern blue-grass lawn with the sweet funeral flower fragrance that reminds us, at this point in time, of a welcomed death...we who reside here in the "upper-lands" endure winter's dawdling demise with unhinged agitation. The white plague turns us back from lofty, preseason destinations...places we need to inspire us with a renewed since of will-to-live in a world run amuck. Nature and solitude seem to be the only things that can take our minds off the current buttloads of contradictory blather-slather. 

Excepting our rollercoaster Perimeter Trail, preseason hikes from our front door in Lovely Ouray involve climbing through a train wreck of dead and/or evergreens (thank you Pine Beatles). The only thing left are aspens...leafless, colorless and winter-like. Chlorophyll, it seems, is still too cold and thick to flow. 

And this, while you slog warm sandy beaches in minimal attire or sip lemonade under the lush foliage of your backyard shade, wearing tank-tops and cutoff Levis short shorts. But post-holing drifts is good for balance and strength. It's the price of being ready...to condition lungs and legs for a too short summer spent above timberline. 

At least something flowers at lower elevations...

So we drum fingers, impatiently gazing at an unmoving calendar while dreaming of mid-July's wade through fields of columbine and paintbrush, bluebells and penstemon. From ridge-lines and summits, we'll cast our eyes on hundred-mile curve-of-the-earth views. As my son Caleb says, "That's the payoff. It's all about the payoff."  


Today's hike is one of those "pre-season" kind we did last week (I'm getting behind). It stars yours truly, and bad-ass mother-hikers Ruthie, Bridget, and Bobbie...

We met at Ruthie's house, only a short walk from the Corbett Creek/Dallas trailhead. If good intentions are worth a shit ("the road to Hell is paved with them...") we will make a loop hike...up Corbett and down Dallas. We expect snow up high, hopefully not so much that we can't stay on-trail. It was a breezy day, relief for an uphill sweat-fest under full sun. Speaking of "festivals," are they now a thing of the past?

Some days second-winds are reluctant to show. It took a couple miles for legs and lungs to quit fighting and come to an "understanding." 

The Whitehouse massif gave us something pretty to look at while grunting and wheezing up Corbett. It's both spectacular and magnetic...tugging at hearts like a lure. Nothing like rugged, snowcapped mountains to take your mind off the grind. Corbett is narrow, loose and rocky, better to hike up than slip-slide down. It snakes upward through a forest of oak brush that clings to a few ugly brown leaves left over from fall.

Ahh Haa! A lower grouping of aspen shows off a little spring green. Higher up, though, a different story (sigh).

Almost to the top, the south-facing trail flattens as it gains the ridge.

Aspen forests are actually one large plant that self-propagates from the same root system. Rather abruptly, we transitioned from a white-barked aspen forest to a light green-barked one. Chlorophyll is thought to account for the difference in color, so maybe chlorophyll is thawing after all. Aspen are considered "invasive," as they take a foothold in dying or decaying (weak) conifer forests. Aspen can also propagate by seed, which gives them an two-pronged advantage. One disadvantage is that they are short-lived...somewhere between 100 to 150 years. 

Once we topped the ridge, the north-face was a reality check.

It was a good workout...a calorie burner. 
Cheers from Lovely Ouray,
Mark and Bobbie