saturn return to sender

CRW_5702.jpg

Went backpacking this weekend to the most beautiful place I’ve yet seen in Colorado. The bowl enclosing Crater Lake, just west of the continental divide in Indian Peaks Wilderness, was patterned after some rich gray-green dream. It’s lush and wet but has that alpine purity of air you only find at altitude. I’m guessing that storms from the west are lifted and forced to dump their moisture here: in late July it’s a near-rainforest just below treeline. Moss and ferns and pines grow anywhere they can get half a toe-hold. The lake sits at the bottom of a cathedral cirque of peaks, a “crater” all edges and teeth and evening-glowing spires. Waterfalls spill into the lake from the melting snowfields above and fill the bowl with their constant distant soundwash.

I think it’s that I get tired of the arid Colorado climate. Little verdant gems like this make me all lovey-dovey for the western landscape again.

The trail up to the lake is wonderful, too. It’s called Cascade Creek Trail, and for good reason: there are several waterfalls along the eponymous creek, and they are occasionally absurdly perfect. It does what good trails do: give you a little narrative of landscape visuals. It foreshadows a bit at the beginning, revealing the distant glaciated peaks near your destination. Then it hides them, but offers other treats along the way: wildflower meadows, aspen stands, the waterfalls, alpine tundra glowing green along the top of your canyon. The water from the creek is sweet and cold.* As you get higher, the sculptured cirque comes into view as the vegetation becomes more verdant and the temperature drops. A storm rumbled and darkened the sky as we approached. There are a series of small climaxes when some vista of clouds and rock and sunlight orchestrate themselves in some spectacular and obviously rehearsed way (how else could it be so perfect?). Then you reach the lake, and the climactic end of the narrative. Green and gray and lake-mirrored rocky spires and all that. Yay!

At which point it started raining and we ran around like idiots trying to find a free campsite, then rushed to pitch the tents. And then we took a nap for a couple of hours while it rained.

I posted unprocessed photos to my “lazy” flickr account. Will probably take a few of the keepers and clean them up a bit at some point.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.