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August in Colorado is one of the best times to get up to a higher altitude. The hot temperatures on the front range and lower valleys feel too warm to a Coloradan, even if it isn't as humid as the midwest states, or as blazing hot as nearby desert states. Record temperatures this year make that more true than ever. Going from 6,000 feet in elevation to over 9,000 feet for a getaway, is worth a ten degree drop or more in temperature.
On the way to Independance Pass, highway 82 rolls past a tiny town, hardly recognizable as such. Two lakes in view are joined by a narrow neck, like an hourglass, and collect the snowmelt from surrounding peaks, with some that are over 4,600 meters high. (Mt. Elbert, the highest in Colorado, measures some 14,400 feet by the latest geological surveys.) The town of Twin Lakes rests there, mostly unchanged from its early days in the late 1800's.
A couple of dozen buildings are clustered along a few dirt streets, many boarded up but still showing the care builders used in their construction. A charming white clapboard schoolhouse sits at the end of dirt lane, the imagined voices of long-ago schoolchildren seem hard to hear now. A couple of lodgings are open, a general store, an art gallery, and a gas pump that seems to work. Historic buildings are marked with for sale signs.
The few locals seem to know how to divide their lives between this place and jobs elsewhere that keep them solvent. Most know how to do more than one job, whether it's maintaining summer lodgings, cooking for a weekend barbecue concession, or helping park an empty sheriff's car along the highway to slow down lead-footed drivers. There is no thronging crowd, no lighted intersection, no real restaurant anymore. One log-sided hotel is empty, though it was open as recently as 12 months ago. Seems there are a succession of brave or foolhardy attempts to make a go of it in this place that only sees traffic for some five months of the year. But you can find a few tiny cabins to rent, even a collection of rooms in an attractive and well cared for lodge.
The most excitement seen here lately was the brief appearance of a professional bicycle race, with seasoned European pros tackling the high altitude terrain of Colorado.
It seems fitting that this dignified yet quirky little town only has a small purchase on this grand piece of landscape. The mountains around have endured even longer, the town fits in perspective rather well somehow.
-photos by the author
Took a friend for a drive the other day. Happened to drive by the familiar trailhead to a modest urban area summit. We didn't stop (my friend is over ninety and uses a wheelchair) but I was reminded that I'd tried to ascend the peak some time ago with a couple of willing cohorts. We had heard that the trail was vague, with a number of offshoots leading away from the best route. Game trails, some of them. Otherwise the word had it that almost any approach meant a traverse over at least one of several loose boulder fields. Not classic hunks of talus, but mobile, long tongues of decomposing granite spilling down the steep shoulders of the peak.
So on the day of that hike, we weren't surprised when we arrived at a sizable field of this sort. Having traveled through brushy lower trails, it had been hard to keep the summit location in view. The gadget lover amongst us, I had a GPS unit on hand, but the surrounding rocky foothills played hell with its view to satellites. The GPS track zigged wildly over the map, to features we knew we hadn't come anywhere near. So we made a guess to the direction of the summit and began a route. The boulder field we encountered seemed to match an earlier hiker's description.
Soon, after many careful steps up loose suitcase-sized rocks, steeply arranged and none too secure, we began to see a narrowing chute above us. We needed to stay to the sides of the upper reaches of the rock field, avoiding a conveyor like center path. Entering the chute meant fewer loose rocks, but the terrain began to arrange itself in taller stairsteps, with the walls of the chute blocking any effective view of our destination.
Though we hadn't planned to, soon we were bouldering and beginning to reach a more exposed aspect of what we'd been led to believe would be a loose walkup, though strenuous. When we began to take stock of our position, we realized that we had all begun to think about the downclimb. We had reached a stairstep more like a wall; provoking us to entertain having the tallest among us give the other two a hand up to a wide ledge. Here is where we finally had to decide just what it was we were trying to accomplish. We were none too sure that our route wasn't destined to cliff out at a false summit. The day was advancing. And once we talked about it, we had to accept that our route no longer resembled the one described, nor was it a route we had fully prepared for. When you start wishing you had a rope, and have none, it's time to turn around. So, we descended, the better to fight another day.
In the many months since that adventure, things have intervened to delay and prevent another go. But it is still in the back of my mind to tackle it once more. Driving around the area, varying angles and perspectives can be seen; mostly one notices the large spilling tongues of loose stuff. The thing to do next time may be to contour further south, crossing right over the lower part of our ill fated boulder field that had led to the chute. We could make for a different rock field, then ascend after a longer approach that will still entail some loose stuff. A saddle to the south looks promising.
It's interesting having a challenge waiting to be cracked. This is no fabled peak. But it has the potential to frustrate if you're looking for the obvious. Prior hikers seem to agree that no obvious track exists. For now it is a study in topography to ponder. A vantage point to imagine surmounting.
Someday.
That's supposed to be what a climber said, when asked why they climbed the mountain. An offhand kind of answer, saying little, yet saying much. But if explaining an elemental need, desire, ambition or impulse, how better to describe the reason? The mountain being there, being what it is: so high, visible for miles, seemingly unreachable, a beacon to the eye. It is there. I am here. I want to be there, be up there. This perhaps is the draw, the siren song of mountains.
There is a great mountain six miles away from my house. Broad based, surrounded by partnering foothills and reaching well above treeline. A mantle of snow clings to the steep upper features. A picturesque scene. You cannot escape seeing it from nearly any location in the city, the county, even beyond.
Rambling around in this 1920's house, I am amazed to note, not for the first time, that though generally well-appointed with windows, there is not a single one that affords a view of the great mountain. There is one tiny window in an upstairs bathroom, that teases the eye with a hint of the peak. How can that be?
I think of the time when the house was built. The title reveals that the owner was a woman. The building took its place on this street that was the end of the known city limits. The street was the starting point for parades, on the main drag a few blocks west. ( It is still considered the parade start point.) A copy of a faint plot plan with township lines reveals a development wherein the entire block was up for sale as lots.
This corner house with no view has a grand wraparound porch. In recent times I hear the neighbors and passers-by refer to it as "the big house." Smaller houses of varying architecture line the street. Victorian styling is well represented, but bungalow, saltbox, and modest variations on themes appear. Perhaps only one other house approaches the size of this one.
With its seemingly grand position on the street, I can't help but wonder what the original owner thought about the view potential. Did they attempt to site the house for a view, but hit a bureaucratic snag? Was the modest little house to the west built first, and did that dictate that the new house keep its facing windows small to meet some code? I somehow suspect codes were less in evidence at that time. Yet common sense might suggest that neighbors in closely spaced housing would avoid large windows peering over at each other. Perhaps cost was a factor; some fine features on the front of the house bear witness to the pride and means of the owner at that time, but budgets being what they are, it seems likely that cost savings were realized with smaller windows away from the front of the house.
I may never know why the view was dismissed in the planning and building of this house. I do know that it seems strange to me to have to walk down the front steps, and go stand in the middle of the street to see a sight that never fails to impress.
