Rustler Gulch

Ever since we moved over to this side of the Rockies, I've been wanting to go check out Crested Butte - just 2 hours northeast of us. Mostly known as a ski town, I've heard many great things about it, including how beautiful it can be in the summer. It is actually known as the "Wildflower Capital of Colorado," and with it being peak wildflower season right now, I couldn't pass up the opportunity (opportunity being a free weekend) to finally head up there.

Weekend Stats:
Description: Rustler Gulch Trail (said to be one of the best hikes for viewing wildflowers)
Location: Crested Butte, Colorado
Date: July 21, 2012
Round Trip Distance: Just under 10 Miles (Only 8 if you want to take a fairly rough 4-wheel drive road all the way to the trail head, but we didn't feel like risking it).
Starting Elevation: Unknown (probably 10,000 or so)
Ending Elevation: 11,400

A few weeks ago, I posted about my hike to the Blue Lakes near Ouray, and about how many gorgeous wildflowers I saw. Well let me just say, as far as wildflowers are concerned, this hike blew that one out of the water. Don't get me wrong, I still loved the Blue Lakes hike and would definitely still recommend it (in fact it's still probably one of my top favorites), but this one was just flowing with wildflowers. There weren't a whole lot at the beginning, but after the first mile or so they started popping up throughout, and then about 2 miles until the end, they were everywhere. It was absolutely stunning.

Because this hike wasn't too strenuous (the hardest part was probably walking from where we parked our car to the where the trail head actually began), the husband and I decided to participate in a little challenge. We decided it would be fun to each take a camera (I had my iPhone, and Scott had our Sony point & shoot camera) and see who could come up with the coolest pictures. So because of this, we took TONS of pictures (probably about 800 between the two of us!), and it was very hard to narrow them down (we did out best). I'm going to start with just some pictures of the general scenery, and then after that separate them into Scott's pictures and my pictures. And of course you're welcome to comment on who's you think are the best!

(P.S. I finally figured out how to make the photo's bigger!)

We were driving into Crested Butte just as the sun was rising.

This was after the hike, on our way back to town. This river was full of people fishing!

I had to post this last photo because it's titled "Avery Peak" (12,653' tall). Also a view on our way back to town.

Scott's Top Pictures:

Kate's Top Pictures:

Probably my favorite!

Well those were our pictures. I know there were a lot, but we had lots of fun taking them. Plus I think we did a good job getting a nice variety of all the different types of flowers. It was also fun to look at each others pictures at the end, and see the other person's point of view!

Overall, Rustler's Gulch was a great hike that I would definitely recommend, especially during the wildflower season (Late June through August). Other than the length, it was a fairly easy hike with spectacular views. I do recommend going early, as we only saw one other person on the trail until we started heading back, and then the people kept on coming! Definitely well worth our time though and I look forward to going back up to Crested Butte sometime in the future!

Aspen 5K

We didn't end up going on any hikes this weekend, but we did venture over to Aspen so I could participate in my first ever 5K race - Komen for the Cure.

I've been wanting to do a 5K for a few months now, but never got around to actually signing up for anything until last week. Now I wasn't sure I was physically ready, and this wasn't really in the area (Aspen being just under 3 hours away), but I haven't been able to find much else out here, especially something that was for a good cause, so I finally just decided, why not?!

I've been working out a little, and can run 5K on a treadmill, but wasn't sure how I'd do outside with different terrain. In the end, though, I was pretty proud of myself. I took it nice and slow so as not to wear myself out, and completed the race without stopping in 34 minutes, 42 seconds.

Here is our post-run shot:

The race was beautiful - it started in a public park in Aspen, went through some neighborhoods (where I oohed and ahhed over the fancy houses), and then went into more of a "trail" setting with pretty trees and scenery. It would definitely be a pretty place to take a walk next time we're there so I can enjoy it more (which by the way, we will be headed back up to the Aspen area in August to go camping at the Maroon Bells).

On Sunday, I didn't do a whole lot, but thought it would be fun to take the dog on a walk and explore a trail/path (paved), that I've seen the start of, but never really knew where it led to. This path went along the Uncompaghre River, and south out of town. I didn't go too much out of town since it started raining, but I definitely think it could be a nice place to ride my bike (if I ever get around to fixing the flat tire).

So overall, a little bit of a simpler weekend, but fun and scenic nevertheless!

The Great Sand Dunes

 This weekend we ventured about four hours southeast of Montrose, to Great Sand Dunes National Park near Alamosa, Colorado. I have been to the Sand Dunes, about 11 years ago, while driving nearby on a family vacation. We just popped by for an hour or two then, so needless to say this was a whole different experience (and a bit easier to remember).

I don't really have a whole lot of stats for this weekend - you can pretty much hike wherever you want on the dunes. We did do a 2 miler on Saturday evening to the "Dunes Overlook," and then we hiked to "High Dune" on Sunday morning. I don't know the distance, but High Dune is supposedly 650 feet tall. It felt to me like we were climbing so much higher than that - I guess walking up loose sand does that to you!

I took lots of pictures this weekend, so I'm just going to do quick descriptions and let the pictures tell the rest.

Once we got to the Dunes on Saturday afternoon, we walked out on the flat part for a little while, and then got caught in a little rain:

This mountain was getting engulfed by the rainstorm on our way in:

Once the rain passed, we set up camp. We had great views of the park:

Throughout the evening we saw tons of wildlife, including a bear! The bear actually looked like he had been in a fight..and didn't come out of it well (you can't really see it in the picture but both of his eyes looked like something had gotten to them).

Colorado still has all of its fire ban's in place (despite the rain we were having), so we headed back out of the park to get some dinner. We stopped at an overlook on our way back in to admire this view:

 I kept seeing these wildflowers around and thought they were so pretty!

Sunday morning we started our hike to the top of High Dune around 7am, and were the second people to the top:

Scott and I's family portrait:

That black dot on the point of the dune is me!

Scott and Argie running down the dunes!

Me running down the dunes.

After I made it about halfway back down, I decided shoes were no longer necessary!

 Pretty sand!

Well that was our trip. Growing up in Colorado, I love every chance to walk barefoot in the sand, so I had a blast! I think I may need to make the Sand Dunes a yearly tradition!

Gorgeous Wildflowers and Bright Blue Lakes

Well today's hike was probably one of the most beautiful I've done - soaring thirteen and fourteen thousand foot peaks, an abundance of wildflowers, and gorgeous turquoise blue lakes!

Description: Hike to Blue Lakes and an attempt at Blue Lakes Pass
Location: Near Ouray, Colorado
Date: July 1, 2012
Round Trip Distance: 10.6 Miles
Starting Elevation: 9,400 feet
Ending Elevation: about 12,500 feet

We made it to the trailhead just before 6:00am this morning ready to hike, at minimum, to the Lower Blue Lake with intentions of making it to the Upper Blue Lakes, and, if we could muster up the strength, all the way to Blue Lakes Pass. Now there are actually four total blue lakes - the lower being the easiest to get to at about 11,000 feet, and the upper three up an additional 500 or so feet. After you pass the Blue Lakes, you can continue on to Blue Lakes Pass, which brings you to about 13,000 feet. Then, if you're still not completely exhausted, you can actually connect to the trail leading to the summit of Mount Sneffels (14,150 feet).

Now, we definitely didn't have any intentions of getting to the top of Mount Sneffels (we would like to do this sometime, but there is a much shorter trail on the other side of the mountain), but we were hoping to maybe make it to Blue Lakes Pass which puts you at a saddle between Mount Sneffles and an additional peak. You can probably tell by my "description" above, but unfortunately we didn't quite make it there. So without further ado - here's what we did today:

We started off just after sunrise and did the first 3.3 miles fairly quickly, especially considering it was a constant uphill the majority of the way. 3.3 miles marked the lower blue lake, so we took a quick break here and got some pictures in:

Then we started another ascent towards the Upper Blue Lakes. Now, when we were doing our original research on this hike, we didn't quite realize just how much "Upper" they are. It was quite a bit more of a climb to finally reach the middle lake. The third lake was just a little farther, but not too bad (and you can see the forth lake, just barely - it's a tiny one directly above the larger one shown):

You can also probably see in this photo, the trail along the right side - this is the incredibly steep (and oh so fun) ascent up to Blue Lakes Pass. After we had a nice long rest at the Upper Lakes, we decided to attempt it. Now, this is an elevation change of about 1500 feet in a very short amount of trail. We made it to the 12th switchback, and then I got a little freaked out. After the 10th switchback, the lovely grassy area was gone, and we were on loose dirt and rock on a very steep edge. I tried my best to keep going, but I've determined from some of my last couple hikes, that this is probably one of my biggest fears. Not heights, no I can handle those, it's the lack of stability. Just knowing that one wrong foot placement and I could be sliding down a mountain kind of gets to me (but I'm completely fine looking over the edge of the Empire State Building). So nevertheless we did turn back, but not without one last picture of how much more we had to go - and I do think we were at least 3/4 of the way:

So we turned back from this point, just over 5.25 miles in, and started our descent back to the Blue Lakes. One cool thing about this hike, was that you were able to get some great views overlooking the lakes. It was from these viewpoints that they really looked gorgeous and bright, bright blue:

Once we made it back down to the Upper Blue Lakes, we also did a little exploring before we headed completely back. We walked up the little fourth blue lake and got some great views from up there as well. We also took some time to just really enjoy our surroundings. As I said at the beginning, this really was one of the most beautiful hikes I've done. It just felt secluded (which is a little strange considering we saw quite a few people on this one), but it did. I think it had something to do with the 360 degrees of mountain peaks surrounding us, with the beautiful green grass and wildflowers, and the lakes really were as bright as they are shown in my pictures (possibly even more so). It truly was gorgeous.

Now to sum up my post, here are some pictures of just a few of the many, many wildflowers we saw: