Wearied. We were ready to backpack again! Torrey and I had finished a ten mile day hike in the front country of Rocky Mountain National Park and just barely missed an afternoon downpour when we found ourselves sitting in our car at the trailhead for our next two nights of backpacking, waiting out the last bit of rain. We were fatigued from our fast-paced morning hike, but I was itching to get into the backcountry again. Our gear was loaded, the rain let up, and we set off, knowing our camp was only three or so miles away from the trailhead.
What we hadn't counted on was the trail condition. With the afternoon thunderstorm everything was wet and slick, and the trail itself was just as steep if not worse than the first trail we hiked up to Skeleton Gulch when we arrived in the park. We moved slowly, methodically placing one foot in front of the other, bowed forward to try to counteract gravity. Each of us was lost in our own exhaustion-hazed world and we hardy acknowledged each other; I didn't even have enough energy to call out to Torrey that I was stopping to take a picture.
That is one thing I try not to lose, no matter how much my feet hurt or how much my lungs sear: I want to notice everything around me, be in the present, hold it in my mind's eye, and if I see something that I want to keep forever, I set up a shot and snap a photo. There's a good chance I will never return to the exact spot I was in at that moment, and I take pictures as much for the emotional memory as the physical one. I can look at one of the pictures I took and tell you what was going on around me, what I was feeling, and why I decided to take that exact photo.
On this particular trail, everything was vibrant, still dripping after the recent rain. The greens stood out vividly, from the mosses on the boulders to the needles on the trees, and every once in a while the pop of a red mushroom or a splash of purple wildflowers swam across my field of vision. The world was overcast, perfect for a quiet hike through a forest that smelled like damp earth and wet plants and cool mountain rain. Boulder Brook itself ran next to the trail for much of the first half of our hike, loudly and cheerfully bouncing from boulder to boulder as it raced down the mountainside in the opposite direction from where we were headed. I love camping near water, especially loud water like this mountain stream, and I was excited to reach our destination and get a good night's sleep on its banks.
It was with relief when we finally reached our campsite for the night, and we set up near the brook's rushing waters but far enough away that we were out of an area where it had clearly flooded before. Trees and rocks were piled up at unnatural levels, creating dams against living trees and bigger boulders. The vegetation in the area had been stripped away except for a growth of grasses and mosses directly lining the stream. A flood of some force had ripped through the area, and we were not eager to be in the path of another one should it storm too badly that night. As it was, it only sprinkled on us a little before the sky cleared and we were able to watch stars appear overhead as evening enveloped our camp.
Other Rocky Mountain Adventures: The Eclipse, Skeleton Gulch, Box Canyon, Thunder Pass, Glacier Basin, and Unfinished Business.
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