We were up very early this morning to start the long drive over the pass. The good thing about these early morning drives is that it gives us a chance to see the sun rise, and the way it lights up the foot hills . . .
and the clouds. We can tell that this is going to be a day of wandering God's wonders already!
The first 25 miles of our trip today was on pavement. But then we turned east onto Kebler Pass for 24 miles of gravel roads. The sun had not yet peeked out from behind the mountains when we turned east.
We were hoping that our early morning drive might find some wildlife (or elves) just waking up. We did find this doe and fawn.
Mule deer fawns are adorable with their over-sized ears and spots!
Even though we are traveling on gravel roads today, we must say that it is smoother than some paved roads we have driven. We wouldn't hesitate to take the motor home on this unpaved pass that is lined with aspen. Because of all the aspen, this is a very popular drive in the fall when those quaking leaves turn to gold.
Even though it's only 49 miles from Hotchkiss, it was a 2-hour drive to get to our first destination--Irwin Lake. It's a couple miles off Kebler pass, so of course Mark wasn't expecting to see elves here. We thought about an early morning kayak trip around this lovely mountain lake, but we decided to take a hike instead.
The gravel road got much worse, and we took the car up as far as we dared to get one of the popular parking places for the Scarp Ridge trail. You know it's going to be a great trail when you can already see the mountain peaks as soon as you park your car.
We continued to see those peaks as we headed straight up the trail. It's steep, and we don't mind saying that we take plenty of rest stops on hikes like this.
We can also rest while we take pictures of the wildflowers that are covering the mountain sides right now.
Those same mountains that we could see from our parking place are getting bigger as we hike higher,
and Irwin Lake is getting smaller.
We finally crested the ridge, where we could look down the valley to where the town of Crested Butte lies.
We have wandered into more of God's wonders as we can see mountains in every direction that we turn.
Of course, Mark had to climb to the tip of the ridge. We'll include the zoomed-in picture of him first.
Now you can find him in the picture below, and understand more of the majesty of his surroundings.
Since we're playing "where's Waldo" on these mountains, can you see "where's Denisa" on the ridge? She's a tiny dot just visible with the blue sky and puffy white clouds around her.
We have sung the words "purple mountain majesty" in the song "America" all of our lives. Today we experienced the purple in these majestic mountains.
Right now we're the closest we will be to the mountains we could see from our parking space. We would love to hike right over to them, but we discovered that there is a deep valley between us.
We were especially tempted to try when we saw that there is a lake in the bowl formed between those mountains. From this angle we could barely see the color of Green Lake and its rocky boundary. We found out from fellow hikers that the Green Lake trail was closed recently when the private property owners tired of people crossing their land to get there.
At the view point at the end of our hike we were at 12,214 feet in elevation. At this height, we could look across the mountain peaks for many miles around us. One of the distant peaks is in the Maroon Bells where we hiked a week ago.
After that windy view point, it was time to turn our hiking boots back towards the trail head. It's nice to know that it's all downhill from here. We can see our destination--Irwin Lake--far away in the distance.
It's not as tiring going down, but we still paused to take more wildflower pictures. The lupines and paintbrushes seem to be at their peak here.
The clouds continued to gather as we hiked towards the car. It was a 5.4-mile hike with 1,690 feet in elevation gain today. We were glad to be back in the car by the time the moisture started falling from those clouds. The first precipitation was tiny snow balls. They hit the car windshield and melted into circles of droplets.
Then it started raining, following by pea-size hail. We watched as all the kayakers raced to get off the lake. Irwin Lake danced with the waves caused by the hail. Even though the storms cleared the crowded lake area, we decided not to kayak today after all. Instead, we headed down the final eight miles of Kebler Pass. Mark is once again on the lookout for his elves. But instead, we found this mother-baby pair!
It's the first moose of the summer, and we are delighted to see her calf as well!
Sorry for all the pictures, but we stopped the car and watched them grazing on the bushes for a long time.
When they finally ambled into the forest, we continued our drive along this gravel pass. We knew we weren't far from the town of Crested Butte, when we could see the signature mountain at the end of our road.
Just like most of the touristy mountain towns we have visited this summer, downtown is hopping with people. They've closed one lane of Main street so that extra outdoor seating could be added to the restaurants to allow for social distancing. That left a one-way lane so that hikers with tired legs could still tour downtown from their car.
As tired as we were from our five-mile uphill hike, Denisa got this crazy idea that we should try one of the bike paths on the edge of town.
We remember fondly our bike ride on the Lower Loop five years ago, and we had just re-read that blog entry. Like last time, we enjoyed the mountain and water views. But we missed the wildflowers that were at their peak during our visit five years ago. Crested Butte calls itself "The Wildflower Capitol" but we think that title belongs to the mountains above Lake Irwin this summer.
Denisa is wiser and a worse bike rider than she was five years ago. So she sent Mark by himself to finish the loop that we did last time together. He headed up into the longer, uphill, narrow forest bike trail . . .
while Denisa headed down on the shorter, flatter, wider trail along the river.
Mark's pictures were of the single-track bike path through the meadows . . .
and the rocky uphills through the aspens.
Just like five years ago, the clouds turned gray and threatened rain. While Denisa leisurely made her flat ride back to the car, Mark was hustling through his longer, harder ride. That's because he realized he had the only car keys in his pocket and Denisa was going to get drenched if this storm happened before he returned. Neither of us got too wet, but let's just say that our legs are REALLY tired now.
Just as we started the easterly drive across Kebler pass this morning looking into the sun, we started the return drive this afternoon with the sun sinking in front of us and lighting up the westerly-facing mountains.
It was another beautiful day, wandering God's wonders that are just too big to fit into a camera lens. The only thing that could have made this day any better would have been a sighting of elves carrying just- baked cookies on Kebler Pass.
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