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| Hiking | 2.91 Miles |
1,204 AEG |
| | Hiking | 2.91 Miles | 1 Hour 52 Mns | | 1.92 mph |
| 1,204 ft AEG | 21 Mns Break | 6 LBS Pack | | |
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| partners | | Barely in Colorado for a few hours and we're already setting of on our first elevation acclimatization hike reaching just short of 12,000'. Although reasonably short in the end it turned out to be the most elevation gain per mile of all our hikes over the next few days so it was a pretty strenuous warm-up.
Just a short distance from the TH we encountered a well-mannered mule who stopped on the trail. We stepped to the side a few feet and it plodded on by as nonchalant as can be. About a 1/4 mile later we looked back down and saw the mule about to go out of sight around a corner on the Last Dollar Road so I took a picture of it on full zoom. Shortly after we are met by an Hispanic man and two herding dogs. It appeared he knew very little English as he just asked "mule?" to which we replied it had passed us a while back. He asked "long time?" and our response was to point in the direction of the corner of the road and said "20 minutes" which brought a sigh of despair and he took off with a bit more speed.
Not long after we had reached an area of dense evergreens we heard a sound which to me was a bleat of a sheep but to Tracey it could be a bear cub separated from it's mom, which brought a little trepidation. It only took a moment before there were more bleats and it was obvious we were near a flock of sheep. And a few minutes later we are walking through the flock, which all seemed to be headed in the direction we were. As it turned out, their destination was a large grassy meadow on the summit.
With a long day of traveling behind us and skies still threatening off-and-on we didn't spend much time at the summit, before hitting the trail back to the car and continuing our drive north on Last Dollar Road.
A good hike for a warm-up to the higher elevations! Concentrating on blowing out the CO2 made with a bit of force seemed to work fine.
I posted 40 photos on HAZ with the full set of 56 (including the Last Dollar Road photos) here:
http://changephoenix.com/jpserver/web/public/album.php?id=193
A 2-minute video of the wild-life we encountered on the hike is here:
http://changephoenix.com/jpserver/web/public/file.php?id=209 |
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Route Editor
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