Summer Snow

I was too optimistic. I thought a low 13er might be mostly clear of snow, but I guessed wrong. We attempted Whale Peak on Sunday with our friend Andi and her two canines, Ezra and Bella. But it was not to be...threatening clouds along with huge cornices on our approach ridge waylaid us. It's been so stormy this spring, that clouds formed by 10am.  All the snow is great for the water supply, I hear it's at 200% snowpack!  What a wet year, soooo nice for Colorado. 

On another note, I think a winter mountaineering class is in our future for next year. It's long been on my short list - playing with crampons and ice axes and learning how to be safe on mountains in the winter sounds actually very fun to me.  I'm sure it'll cost us $1000, it seems every new outdoor activity in Colorado has an entry fee of a grand. But it's always well worth it. 

Pictures from our hike:

Bella exploring, Whale Peak peeking out behind.

Andi and Tom with Ezra. Lots of snow up high. 

Gibson Lake with very cool icicles, our approach ridge to Whale Peak is the very snowy one on the right. 

Bluebird Morning

Another beautiful day to trail run. South Table Mtn this time with Susanne. Everything is so green right now, which you'd expect in many areas of the US in the summer, but the green won't be here for too much longer.  Soon, in Colorado we will be hoping for rain, so let's enjoy this wet spring we've been having!

Busy

Hi everybody. Been busy the past few weeks so I'm a blog slacker. My husbands parents visited (we love having them, always a lot of fun), among other things. Pictures below from all the craziness recently:

St. Mary's glacier

John Prine concert at red rocks

Film on the rocks (can anyone name the movie?)

Also did the Bolder Boulder 10k, hiked the Manitou Incline for the first time this year and been busy with yoga classes and anatomy workshops. Headed to WV tomorrow for work. Looking forward to some downtime!

Hail

Colorado, I love you in all ways, except for the hail.

We also got over two inches of rain in an hour, thus flooding our crawl space. The fans and dehumidifier are still running!

On a better note, I ran the Bolder Boulder with two fabulous friends - Amy and Susanne. Wonderful race, as usual. 50,000+ people running a race is a lot of great energy!

Amy & I

Susanne & I, not sure who the 742 photo bomber is!

Out with the old...

...in with the new tree. Unfortunately we lost a big tree in the front yard last year. We believe it to be an ash tree, and the ash bore likely got it. Get your ash trees treated people!  It's not that expensive and worth the effort to save the tree. We wish we had known you could do this a few years ago. Trees are so precious in Colorado...

Tom took it down yesterday and a new Imperial Locust will be planted on Thursday. The front yard looks bare, hopefully the locust grows relatively quickly.

Old friends.

Trails, that is. My run at Bear Creek yesterday took me down a trail that has been closed since the big floods last September. As I ran along the creek, many of the trees are still alive, but many are not. Some of the smaller ones are brittle and I think they met their demise under tens of feet of water. But many of the large ones, that still had their tops above the high water line, will live on. And I'm glad.

Almost all of the trails are back open, save for just a few. I'm waiting on those old friends as well.

This is the cottonwood trail, one of many back open...

Consider it Sprung.

Spring, that is. Blossoms abound in our flowering trees. After last years late freezing weather (an altogether too common occurrence along the front range of the Rockies), our apple is ready to produce some fruit this year!

One birdhouse, cheap summer rent, immediate availability. 

Bring on the weekend!