First Snows...

After the storm clouds on Sunday lifted a little yesterday, you could see the first snows coating the back ranges out of town. The skiers and boarders were excited as the snow levels were forecast to drop again this evening down to 8,000 feet or so.

It didn't happen, but the storms left the mountains in a different mood to the one they were in only a couple of days ago when summer was still managing to hang on. Today the sun is shining but the forecast is 45F...I think I am just glad that Lisbon is 75F!!!!

I'm not quite ready for winter yet, though I know I need to prepare myself for when I come back in November! A couple of years ago we were in Crested Butte for Thanksgiving and got 48 inches of snow over the holiday weekend! Snow I can handle: it's the cold I'm not sure about!!! Will definitely need to bring up those thermals this winter!

Here is a very similar view this morning - what a difference the sun makes!!! The colours today were just gorgeous...makes me smile to just look up and see all this and think that we live here...

Fall Colour...

Thought I would share some of the photos I took while out riding my bike on Friday...the trees are really starting to turn and the weather has stayed gorgeous...

This is Lake Grant just above the condos where we live looking towards Crested Butte

and these were taken just up the road (it seems everything around here is up when you are on a bike!!!)
This one was taken from the edge of the lake in the first photo above

Fall is here...

...last weekend Dave and Liz Moloney paid us a surprise visit on Sunday night...it was great to see them...just a shame it wasn't for very long...next time you'll have to stay longer...! Here they are on our deck in the sunshine...no yellow leaves in sight!

The weather has been lovely up to the last few days and we even managed to get photos of the last hummingbirds in the valley...

hopefully they are well on their way south by now since the temperatures have dropped drastically....

Work has also dropped off and I was able to get out early today...I took advantage and drove up Slate River Rd, just north of town...

I was able to get a great shot of Momma deer and her two fawns...

further up, the trees were definitely turning and you could see the snow that has fallen on the back ranges in the last couple of days with the storms we have been having....

thunder, lightening and rain all night long...

it was a very relaxing afternoon and a beautiful drive...something I realize that I'm very lucky to be able to do on a random Tuesday afternoon...one of the reasons we decided to do this, and why I love it here so much! Hope you enjoy looking at the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them...

Toni and Gloria...

This weekend Nick's Aunt Toni and her cousin Gloria came to visit.



They drove up from Las Cruces and Alburquerque New Mexico on Thursday and arrived in Crested Butte on Friday morning. We had a great weekend pretty much hanging out...although we managed to get one of Toni's favourite
activities in - shoe shopping! Love that pink winkle picker...!




















We also managed to get some bar-hopping in...here we are at the bar in the Wooden Nickel on Elk Avenue in Crested Butte for Happy Hour on Friday afternoon!

















...as well as some sight seeing....Sat afternoon we drove up to Scholfield Pass and saw some of the Aspen turning and some great views of the back ranges...











...Saturday night turned into margarita and tequila night...which meant that we didn't get to Lake City as intended on Sunday! The weather wasn't great either though, so we decided to stay home and watch some football...the weather worsened during the day and by evening we had full on torrential rain...too bad for sightseeing but a good excuse for curling up on the sofa!!!



Here are Nick and Toni near Gothic on Saturday afternoon...



All in all, a great time was had by all...and we certainly appreciate all the Hatch Chile and tequila they brought us!!! Now we just have to go visit Gloria and Bob in Albuquerque next time we head down to Las Cruces so we can take back the bottle of Herradura tequila Gloria left and drink it with them and Toni! Salud!!!

Climbing Whetstone...all 12,516 feet!

...and it kicked my butt!!!! Not sure what the problem was, but this was definitely a hard one for me...Nick didn't think it was too bad, but we were certainly both tired when we got back to town!!!

Here is Whetstone form our Powderview condo in the winter (it's the highest one!!!)

The hike goes from the Ohio Creek Valley because private land on the Crested Butte side means there is no access. We passed the trail head at first as it wasn't marked, and had to back track to find it. The first mile or so follows the old Ohio Pass Railroad to a point where it looped around before climbing the pass. This wall is part of the climb up to the pass, I think.

Then it follows a fairly level path towards Whetstone (at least we thought it was fairly level on the way up..we changed our minds on the way back when we had to hike upwards again!). The hike is 12 or so miles long (and feels like more...) It follows a trail for a fair portion of the way, and you have pretty decent views of the mountain all the way through.

Eventually you have to strike off on your own to climb the last 2,000 vertical feet (seriously!). When we came out of the trees and had a clear view of where we were going, I almost had a heart attack (and it was justified!!!). We passed some deer on the way up and had some great views which improved the further in we got.

Here is a view of Whetstone from the trail.

After we cleared treeline, we pretty much headed up the ridge on the right in this photo.

This was the angle of the climb..no wonder I was having a hard time...Nick, Mr Mountain Man, on the other hand, took it all in his stride....! I did keep telling him that it was 45 degrees, but he didn't believe me...now I have proof!

It took us an hour and forty five minutes from clearing tree line to climb up the ridge. The first part was scrub like, the second was climbing up scree (or talus) depending on your definitions...rock in other words, at a steep angle!

I didn't dare look down and was not looking forward to the climb down!

Some of the rock we had to scramble over...!

This view is of Mt Carbon and Axtel, and back towards the Castles. We hiked past both on the way up.

And this is towards the west and the town of Crested Butte over the ridge at the top...

Here I am finally...all smiles! I knew I would make it, it was just going to take me a while...

Nick ventured further along the ridge than I did!

While we were up there, we saw some people cresting the pointed ridge in the background and start heading down...they were on the Whetstone Massif, but a little lower than us.

We also saw a small plane - it passed right over the top of us...Nick managed to capture some of it on the camera!!! It was amazing how low it was/or how high we were!

Surprisingly, we were higher than Mount Crested Butte! The horizontal road is the road into town, the vertical road is the one to Skyland where we live...we were only a little higher though than West Elk Pass (12,490)which we had climbed from Aspen a couple of weeks ago...it felt like a lot more

This view is over Crested Butte Mountain towards Aspen...

Coming down we saw a sure sign that summer is coming to an end...these were the first aspens we had seen changing...a week later, they are even changing here in town...and there are more every day...

The forecast for tomorrow (Monday Sept 10) is cloudy and scattered showers with highs in the 50s and lows on the 20s...the first freeze of the season (noooooo!!!!)...I think it will be a shock to the system...we have barely been out of shorts since we arrived in June...maybe now we can concentrate on getting that kitchen finished since we FINALLY have countertops that fit - I only ordered them at the beginning of June...long story which I will recount once we are finished!!!

Unfortunately, since we haven't sold one of the units, Hawaii and New Zealand will have to wait and we will have to be ski bums this year...rough life, huh? We have to decide which ski passes we want this week to get them at a cheaper price, but I'm not ready to start thinking about winter yet! So in order to delay it a little more, and since two of my jobs end at the end of September, we have decided to delay fall and head for Portugal!!!! We fly to Lisbon and 80 degree temperatures on October 2. After that we will head for London, and then Devon to visit my brother Steve and his family, Sarah, Isabella, Givit and DB. From there, Nick will head back to work, and I will spend a few weeks visiting family in Hull...after October/early November in Hull, fall and winter in Crested Butte will look great! Looking forward to getting the Lisbon, London and Devon photos on the blog...

For Amanda...

Had huge thunder storms yesterday (one of which I got caught in on my bike up on the mountain...) but at least I was able to get more great rainbow shots. Amanda, these are for you...next time I'll try a different vantage point!

Rainbow

Wanted to share this very cool photo that Nick took from our deck of a double rainbow...the photo has not been altered in anyway...the second rainbow was very faint, but the first one was so bright we were convinved the pot of gold was sitting right there in the sage!

Creede and Lake City Loop

Creede And Lake City Loop

Last weekend we decided to escape from our stressful routines here in Crested Butte and head out to the mountains...little did we know the weekend would be more stressful than staying in town...

We headed out on Colorado 114 to Saguache, which we have never driven down before. We have crossed it before though, when we were hiking the Colorado Trail. We decided to stop and relieve some memories...here's Nick at the point where the trail and road intersect before the trail heads up towards Cochetopa Canyon.The drive was much nicer than expected and we stopped so Nick could test the waters...no luck though! Saguache looks like it is starting to become a place on the map...some of the old houses have been fixed up, and there are a few for sale....at least it's not a ghost town like it almost used to be...not sure how the winters are there though! The old hotel in town was closed up and for sale...such a shame, it could be a really cool place to stay...maybe someone will buy it and fix it up one day before it falls into total disrepair.

I did find a couple of gardens full of hollyhocks as well...!

From Saguache we headed through Del Norte and South Fork, both of which were pretty uninteresting and headed along the Rio Grande for Creede. We stayed in Creede when we did the Colorado Trail, this time we just passed by, but I couldn't resist taking a photo of the pillars that frame the gorge in town.

We wanted to camp somewhere near Creede, but after driving along dirt roads on the opposite side of the Rio Grande for a while, couldn't find that perfect camp spot...so we headed further on up towards Lake City.

About 20 miles from Creede and 30 miles from Lake City, we headed up towards the Rio Grande reservoir. It's about thirty miles up a dirt road towards the crossing of Pole Creek and the Rio Grande - it was one of our favourite spots on the CT, and it didn't disappoint this time either...here was the view when we woke up on Saturday morning...

It hadn't been bad the night before either in the other direction when the moon was up...we could hear the coyotes howling in the distance, but fortunately they didn't venture too near...Nick also assures me that they aren't like dingos, so they won't snatch me out of the tent...!

The next morning Nick fished the head waters of the Rio Grande and I decided to relax at the campsite. It was a beautiful day and I cleared up the camp after the BLTs we had (yum, nothing better for breakfast when you're camping!), read and wrote some letters...it was just gorgeous and all was well with the world. When Nick got back we discussed how beautiful it was - especially since we were the only people in the campsite...and how fun it would be to own one of the cabins up here that we saw smoke rising from the night before...

As we had run out of firewood we decide to head down, pick up some supplies in Lake City and then head over to Cochetopa Creek for some Gold Medal trout fishing....

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be!!! Half way down, I heard a hissing noise coming form the back left hand tire - we had punctured and it was going down fast...our main concern was to pull off to the side so we could put the spare on...as I was walking around the truck to the back, I heard more hissing noises...the front right tire had was also deflating quickly....hmmm...quite the problem, since we only have one spare and are still 18 miles up a dirt road off a very quiet back highway 20 miles from Creede and 30 miles from Lake City...Nick tried to plug the front tire with fishing stuff, and we decided that we would have to try and reach the campsite further down, where hopefully there would be a camp host who would be able to help us out...hence the photo at the beginning!

When we finally arrived at the campsite (this was the state of the tire), the host, Jean Baker, said her husband Allen had some plugs but didn't know when he would be back. We decided to cut our losses and stay at the site...it was pretty nice and right on the river so Nick could fish..I got back to my new book (thanks Bob!) Ghosts of Spain, Travels through Spain and it's Silent Past....

When Allen got back they were able to plug the tyre that we had taken off and replaced and blow it back up...now we had to see if it would hold...

Had a delicious dinner of baked potatoes, grilled steak and green beans washed down with a bottle of red wine (boy do we know how to camp!!!)...just know that I will in future make sure I carry a can opener...good job it wasn't just me and a can of tuna in the wilderness...I think I would have starved...or bled to death!

Sunday dawned bright and clear and we had a visitor in camp. Not that he's used to being around people and food!

Fortunately, the tire had held. Allen was kind enough to give us a can of "fix a flat", so we added that for good measure and then set off as fast as we dared to try and reach the Lake City/Creede highway! Amazingly, at 10miles an hour on the rough dirt, we made it about an hour later...mission one: reach the highway - accomplished! We pulled on to the road and made it all the way to Lake City - mission two accomplished! Here we were able to find a garage that was open and that actually stocked our tires and had one in stock..yeah! We celebrated at the Italian restaurant with a glass of wine and lunch, and a walk around Lake City.

Lake City is an old 1870s mining town at 8,671 feet that still looks that way. It's on The Silver Thread Scenic Highway and the Alpine Loop, a four wheel drive loop that can take you to Silverton or Durango. The original Victorian houses are still there and so are the boardwalks. It's very quaint and we love wandering around.

http://ghostdepot.com/rg/mainline/marshall%20route/lakecity.htm

This time, in addition to the Italian restaurant, we found a garden that was open to the public. it was lovely and peaceful.

Time to test out the new tire and head back to Crested Butte....we reflected on the weekend with a margarita at Reuben's in Crested Butte South, finally able to believe that we were going to get home and not have to be towed from the middle of nowhere (the Rio Grande Reservoir) to the middle of nowhere (Lake City!) to try and find a tire...lessons learned this trip? Always carry tire plugs and "fix a flat"...and two spares if you can! It was a great weekend though, and Jean and Allen were lovely (as was the guy who fixed our tire in Lake city!). Unfortunately, we didn't get a photo of them, but they asked us to go and see them at the same camp ground next summer, which hopefully we will... we also didn't get photos on the way back of some of the views coming into Lake City..there is a gorgeous view at one point over Slumgullion Pass of Uncompahgre Peak. Have to go back sometime in the next few weeks as the leaves turn to get that one....