Hiking

This summer, I have been focusing a lot of my time and energy to the bike. But now that summer is over and I’ve accomplished many of my biking goals, it’s time to make some time for the slower things in life, like hiking. Hiking and biking have different feelings to me. On the bike everything happens just a little faster. You cover more terrain, but you notice the small things a little less. The benefit of hiking is that you can take time to soak in the scenery just a little more. You take more pictures. You notice that little flower sticking through the leaves…

My birthday is at the end of September. In the Colorado high country, that means that my birthday usually occurs when the aspen leaves are at their peak. Since early August, I knew the very hike I wanted to do on my birthday – Dark Canyon – all 13 miles of it – or what turned out to be more like 14.5 miles. Though the leaves had peaked a bit early this year, the timing for the hike was actually perfect, with brilliant colors from beginning to end.

It was Susan who came up with the vision of how to complete this hike. We drove to the bottom of Mount Owen and approached the edge of Scarp’s Ridge. From there, we dropped into the basin between Purple Peak and Afley, and then climbed Afley. After, we continued to Oh-Be-Joyful and Hancock and then descended the Oh-Be-Joyful Pass trail and followed that to the Blue Lake trail. When the Blue Lake trail split, we headed toward Star Pass and then traversed our way over to the high point on Scarp’s Ridge. From there, we followed along Scarp’s ridge until the bench that lead us back to our car at the bottom of Mt. Owen.

The views from the northern Ruby Range and plenty of scree scrambling are a few things we enjoyed during our Purple and Augusta hike!

Both visitors and locals alike often gravitate toward Crested Butte to enjoy the outdoors. The scenic hiking is one of Crested Butte’s primary attractions. However, in early season, the classic alpine hikes are still buried in snow and hikers will have to access lower elevation trails, often closer to town. Knowing where these trails are and when they tend to melt out is the key to enjoying early season hiking in the area. This post provides a list of some great early season hikes near Crested Butte.

We just had a squall. A big snowsquall. The kind of squall that came in with a vengeance and left