Colorado is a truly spectacular state. Even with a thick cloud cover that blocked out the higher mountains, I could see why it is referred to as “The Switzerland of America.” Crossing the Continental Divide I realized that, just like the rivers, I too was headed toward the Atlantic now. It suddenly hit me that I was leaving the Great and Wild West and entering a whole new ecosystem, a whole new world.
The human brain is driven to recognize patterns, to identify recurring themes in our external environment. A hiker’s brain is no different, and after countless hours on the trail a hiker begins to notice recurring personalities, different individuals with strikingly similar tendencies. My first three favorites today.
I pulled over numerous times to explore the Fishlake National Forest and San Rafael Swell area. The scenery was so spectacular that I never wanted to get back in the car. The saying goes, “Everything is bigger in Texas,” but I doubt they have earthworms as large as I found in Utah!
Sometime it takes an accident to shake the sense of complacency that befalls hikers who have never been injured in the mountains.
This year, packing lunch food for an early-season hike, I opened the fridge to be confronted with the label of our favorite mega-jar of dill slices.
It was an awesome scramble, probably one of my favorites and before we knew it we were topping out on Crestone Peak, wind rushing over the lichen spotted rocks near the summit. The vertigo was intense. It was only 8 am.
About a year ago, we published a book review for Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2′s Deadliest Day. I recently spoke to Peter Zuckerman, co-author of the book to find out more about his experience with the Sherpas and the Pakistani climbers as he collected information for this book.
There are a few times in one’s life when the planets align and something spectacular happens that you know you may never experience again. In our case, the brightest of the planets literally aligned across the midnight sky during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, and our little backpack quartet, my husband John and I and our friends Dick and Steve, found ourselves fortuitously under a clear sky next to Purple Lake in the central Sierra on that exact night.
The morning sun was warm on our backs as we stood high in the sky atop the aptly named, huge stacked-granite mound called Cloud’s Rest at 9926’ and looked down 1100 feet to the top of Half Dome and over a mile down to the Yosemite Valley floor below. Today we would finish our journey along the northern John Muir Trail among the masses of humanity in the Valley, having started 13 days and 144 miles earlier in Bishop.
As recently as 2000 years ago nearly all of Yosemite National Park, including the promontory of Cloud’s Rest where we sat, had been covered by a 60-mile-long, 2000 foot thick glacier that extended from Mt. Lyell, Yosemite Park’s tallest peak to our southeast, all the way down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River to our northwest. Only the tips of the highest peaks in the area protruded from the top of the ice.
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