Winter snows have more long term relevance here than in Minnesota. The snowpack in the Rockies, especially the mountains whose melting snows feed the Colorado River, influences water availability in nine states including drought battered California. So when we get a late March snow like the one going on right now-about a foot when it’s done according to Weather Underground-there are lots of happy people. This snow and a couple more apparently coming next week are welcome because we had a dry February and a dry, up until now, March.
Tai chi is over and I took my first mountain hike since hiking Upper Maxwell Falls to Lower Maxwell Falls with Ruth last fall. The Cub Creek trail winds up from 8,400 feet, the trailhead only a couple of miles from our house. So, I drove over there about 2 p.m and was back home about 3:20, having spent an hour walking up what I believe is Black Mountain. The trail is in the Mt. Evans’ Wilderness area.
Mt. Evans is a fourteener, the most prominent peak near our home and, according to our neighbors, a weathermaker for our area. There are definitely weather influences by taller mountains on lower ones, especially when the taller ones are in the west as is the case with Mt. Evans relative to Shadow Mountain. Most of our weather comes from the west and Mt. Evans changes its character before it hits us.
This trail runs first through a forest of lodgepole pine, then opens to a burned out area with a magnificent vista to the north. I’ll post the pictures later today. After the burned out area, which is fairly level, the elevation gain became serious, for me at least. The forest thins out, with older trees. When the trail continues up past a service road, it begins to get rocky.
view from burned over area
I pushed myself going up the trail, feeling the burn in my lungs and my quads. This was my Saturday workout and it was a good one. Since it’s March, the trail varied, some spots were icy, some covered with snow, other parts bare. This will be the last time I leave my trekking poles behind. Going up is not much of a problem, but hiking down the icy portions was treacherous.
While I hiked a rifle cracked somewhere below, more than once, filling the canyons nearby with echoes. Since this is National Forest land, not National Park, the motto is mixed use, which includes hunting though I can’t imagine what’s in season in March.
This is the kind of boots on the ground experience I want to make a regular part of my life. So many trails and mountains nearby.
Cities. In 2008 a global threshold found over 50% of the population in cities, a percentage calculated to be 70% by 2050. Cities have many charms, their bulging populations are testimony to that. I found an artful charm in Denver last night.
The Rocky Mountain Land Library had a pop-up evening at the Denver Architectural Collaborative on Santa Fe. The Collaborative is in in the middle of the Santa Fe Drive Arts District which holds, on the first Friday of every month, a gallery crawl. Last night was the first Friday.
So, while discovering what the Library planned for its Hartsel location in South Park, I also had the opportunity to experience the first Friday event. While the Library’s exhibits, books and people were interesting, the galleries and people and food trucks were exciting. As often happens, the temperature in Denver was higher than ours at home, 57 degrees to 35, so the night was warm, filled with people wandering from gallery to gallery.
The district runs for five blocks or so. There are museums like the Museo de Las Americas and Denver University’s Center for the Visual Arts, many galleries with a wide range of art, artist’s studios, funky restaurants and best of all food trucks with a wide variety of fare. Last night there were gyros, wild game burgers and steaks, barbecue, Mexican among many others. The crowd was mostly young, the fabled millennials of Denver out on the prowl.
This place made me feel alive, at home. These are my people and there are a lot of them.
“There were many impressive wind reports Thursday, but none more so than at Monarch Pass which recorded (unofficially) a 148mph gust Thursday evening. Shortly thereafter the station stopped reporting wind…” weather5280
These chinook winds are formidable. Here’s the weather advisory for today:
High Wind Warning remains in effect until noon MST Friday...
* timing... southwest winds will increase in the Front Range
foothills through the afternoon... peaking in the late afternoon
and evening hours.
* Winds... west to southwest 30 to 45 mph with gusts to 80 mph
mainly above 7500 feet. West to northwest winds 35 to 50 mph
with possible gusts to around 90 mph tonight and Friday
morning.
* Impacts... people planning travel should be prepared for very
strong cross winds causing hazardous driving conditions. Hikers
should be alert for falling trees. Power outages will also be
possible.
And, just to add something extra to winter: a red flag warning.
Red flag warning remains in effect until 6 PM MST this evening
for wind and low relative humidity for areas south and southeast
of Denver... fire weather zones 216... 241... 245... 246... and 247...
* affected area... fire weather zones 216... 241... 245... 246 and
247.
* Timing... gusty winds will continue through with humidities
dropping. Winds will remain very strong this evening but
humidities will increase.
A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now or will occur shortly. A combination of
strong winds... low relative humidities... and dry fuels can
contribute to extreme fire behavior. If a fire is started or
ongoing the potential for it to rapidly spread is high.
Ruth and I went for a long walk yesterday at Meyer Ranch Open Space Park. Gertie, our wire haired German pointer, came with us. Along the way we talked about a possible erratic (“I know what an erratic is,” Ruth said.) because it’s top had jagged, thin sheets exposed. I wondered why it hadn’t eroded.
We saw huge Lodgepole pines that had recently been cut to protect power lines in an easement running up Doublehead Mountain. When I started to count the rings on one stump easily 3 feet wide, Ruth asked, “Are you going to count all of them?” Yes, I was. The tree was between 75 and 80 years old. We’d been alive for much of the same time.
The trail went took went through forest. Ruth picked up branches along the way to make rings. I told her I admired how she found things to make wherever she went. “It’s good to have projects.” “Yes,” she said, “I have two, three, maybe five projects at home.” Ruth paints, sews, does fashion design, builds robots and reads in a way that gives me a shock of recognition.
Meanwhile, Gertie pulled me along, straining to get to the smells along the side of the trail. We rarely walk our dogs since they have a fenced in yard to roam, so they’re leashed train only enough to get into the vet and out. When we got back to the Rav4, we were all tired.
Go now, the snow has ended. This paraphrase of the last words of the Catholic mass sums up life after 18 inches of snow. Things get moving again after the last snow falls and the plows get roads opened and sanded. That last being especially important for those of us who live in the mountains.
Snow storms bring beauty in their wake unlike their wilder cousins tornadoes, hurricanes, derechos. Here are a couple of photographs from this morning.
Kate and I went to the Aspen Peak Winery in Bailey last night for seafood paella and Spanish music. I love local events and this one had a good combination of homemade ambiance and terrific food.
On the drive to Bailey, about 20 minutes under normal circumstances, we experienced rush hour on Highway 285. The event was at 6 pm and Bailey is west of us in Park County. Rush hour is rush hour, even in the mountains, and I would not want to make this commute every day, especially after a big snow storm.
Saw a pick-up with a funny, but biting bumper sticker: Save an elk, shoot a land developer. Sort of the flip-side to a 1970’s bumper sticker that has remained in my memory: Sierra Club, kiss my axe. That was in Ely, Minnesota during the debate over the creation of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area.
Kate’s had a good, but long week organizing the kitchen. She’s ready to get back to sewing. Golden Solar is coming to finish the critter guards on our micro-inverters today. Tai Chi later this morning. Probably chainsaw work later today. The weekend.
“Please be very careful if you are outside tonight and if you have animals. My next door neighbor was outside with her dog about 6 tonight and a mountain lion ran out from under her deck and ran between our houses. She got her dog inside quickly.”
Kate’s at the Bailey Library, a sewing day from 9 to 3 with the Bailey Patchworkers. They make stone soup and work throughout, stopping only for a brief business meeting. Quilting and handwork have been Kate’s entré to local folk. She has been invited to join a needlework group, too. It meets next week. All part of settling in.
Even though we’ve had a bumpy road with many of our house related projects, it occurred to me that even a bumpy start still grounds us in the local culture. We’ve learned about the shortage of folks in the skilled trades, an apparent difference of work ethic between here and Minnesota and had to adjust our expectations about how long projects will take, to get started and to finish. There are local habits and customs, a mountain way of doing things, that we have had to adapt to.
Sometime soon we’re going to start attending services at Beth Evergreen, a small Jewish reconstructionist congregation in Evergreen. They have a more relaxed worship schedule, none during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday time and when they are regular they alternate between Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to meet folks.
