We were up early this morning, and made a beautiful hike to Lake Agnes that we blogged about last time. But it was still early in the day, and we had time--and energy--for another hike. So we drove to the trail head for the Montgomery Pass trail, ate our picnic lunch, and started off on hike #2 for the day. What will be our hiking mile total this day?
We have to say that this hike wasn't as spectacular as Agnes Lake. A fire swept through this area, killing many of the trees and leaving dead trunks that fill whole hill sides.
But some of the best displays of wildflowers can be found in the charred remains of a forest fire.
The first mile and a half of the trail was straight up, and we felt like we were on a continual stair climber. Plus we were feeling the lack of oxygen, as we were over 10,000 feet in elevation on this trail. We had to stop often to catch our breath and take pictures of the arctic lilies that were still blooming in the snow in July.
As we came out of the forest and reached the pass, the flowers were just exploding on the hillside.
After almost 2.5 miles, we made it to the top of Montgomery Pass at 11,000 feet. That elevation will literally take your breath away!
Now we had a decision to make. Do we turn around and go back down the way we came up? Or do we try to find a little-known trail that will make this into a loop trail to see new things? We both love a loop, but it would definitely be easier to follow a tried-and-true hiking path and go back the way we had just come. Taking the loop would make this a longer hike, and do you remember your guess for today's hiking total? It might be longer now.
We chose the loop, and started looking for the new trail. Mark kept looking at his phone with the All Trails app open, and we followed the dotted line that was on his screen. That was an interesting way to hike?!? It brought us to a wide meadow that we would have missed if we went back the same way. Denisa was wanting Mark to turn around for a picture with those mountain tops behind him. But why was he motioning like that instead?
It was because he had spotted something furry in the middle of that wide meadow. But what was it?
It finally turned around and looked at us. It was a very big-eared, light-colored fox.
That made this hike suddenly take longer, as we had to try to take the best picture possible of this unexpected wildlife encounter.
Sorry for so many pictures, but we couldn't decide which one was the best. We showed them to the ranger at the visitor center, and she was excited to see them. A fox is a rare sighting here at State Forest State Park. She has a little red on her face, but it's considered to be a white fox.
When the fox finally wandered into the woods, Denisa finally got her picture of Mark, standing in front of the tops of the Cragg Mountains.
We had just hiked to Agnes Lake earlier this morning, at the base of those mountains.
Right after the meadow, our loop hike took us right beside these curious red indentions. If we took a picture it would be hard to tell just how big they were. It was too steep to walk down into the bowl, so Mark slid down--probably not the best decision.
Anyway, he gave some sense of scale to the size of these craters. He couldn't see over the rim when he was standing at the bottom.
These were certainly odd red craters in the middle of a green meadow. Now Mark had to figure out how to get out.
There were three craters, and we wished for an explanation of how they were formed. We think Mark was not the only person that had the idea of getting down to the bottom of one. But others had used logs as ladders to get up and down.
We continued following our imaginary dotted line until it finally looped us back to the trail. We also found a sign nailed to a tree that indicated this was the way "to bowls." Still no explanation of what the bowls were. But our picture also showed why sliding down into a red dirt bowl was not a good decision. We're not sure if those hiking pants will ever be the same.
We got some good exercise on this two-hike day, and we were ready for a little rest. But we wanted to check our messages and call to wish our son "happy birthday", so we took a trip to the state park visitor center to use their wifi. While driving down the highway, Mark spotted a moose! He yelled and pointed, and Denisa saw it too, even though it was obscured by the trees along the road. We won't be skunked on this Colorado moose hunt! We didn't get a picture, but we couldn't wait to log our moose spotting at the "wildlife sightings" board at the visitor center.
After using the wifi, Mark thought we needed to hike to where we saw the moose. Remember that we have already gone on two hikes today. That's a lot to ask our legs to go on another hike this evening. But we did. We headed out on the recommended moose-sighting Gould Loop hike that runs parallel to the highway. We should be able to get a good view of our moose from here!
While we did find a beaver dam, and it was a beautiful blue-sky day, and the afternoon temperatures were in the 60's . . . we never did find our moose. But we did add another 3.2 miles to our legs. What was your guess for today's hiking total? Well, the third hike brought today's hiking total to over 12 miles. That was definitely more than Denisa was planning. We were tired, and ready for an early bed-time, with dreams of finding more moose at State Forest State Park--tomorrow.
