escape the city in the Rocky Mountain way...

Colorado has a beautiful autumn- but if you blink you will miss it. We were lucky to see the golden aspens while they were here...and are just as lucky to see snow back on the Front Range peaks visible again from Denver.

We went to Snowmass last weekend-a four hour drive from Denver that stops about 10 miles north of Aspen. The long drive was absolutely worth it on many levels. First- the drive itself is gorgeous, traveling through Glenwoos Canyon and Independence Pass.  Second- this part of Colorado has massive mountains and long stretches of trail that let you get truly deep into the wilderness. On Saturday we had a wonderful walk through the yellow aspens. Overnight, not two full weeks after fall officially arrived according to the calendar, winter announced her impending arrival.

Snowmass Creek

Bear Bag

The winter storm that kept us up on Saturday night covered the ground with a light snow (no big deal) but the wind knocked down a ton of trees along the trail (including a very scary close call with a tree bending over our tent!) The storm also made our plan of attempting a summit of Snowmass Mountain out of the question. It can be frustrating to drive such a far way with summit plans only to have the weather ‘ruin’ them- but our trip was an amazingly good time just as it was.

Tent in the morning (notice the leaning tree)

Scray Tree! The brown patch is where our tent was.

Log jam we used to cross Snowmass Creek- slippery with snow!

much easier on the way back...

Big Pines that fell during the night

Dragonfly on the trail

Sean at Snowmass Lake (Snowmass Peak in background)

awww :)

Wrench 1, Sean 0

Hike on the way back

I can still smell the leaves...

We were in the Elk Range- which is where Sean spent his Colorado Outward Bound trip and where we had planned on going when we came out to Colorado on vacation last June (a plan that was again thwarted by weather…but in June!) It has a totally different feel to it then a lot of the areas we have been in – it definitely felt like we were back out east with the rain and forest based hike. In all we hiked about 16 miles through both Aspen and Pine forest ending at Snowmass Lake. The massive peak set behind the lake is Snowmass Peak, not Snowmass Mountain. With the weather as it was we were never even able to see the Peak we had planned on climbing. Looks like it will be a whlie before we have another chance as the snow conditions will have too high of a risk for avalanche danger pretty soon.

Why we turned back...