Lotus Colorado held their 2012 Christmas party Saturday night at Club Auto. It was a pot luck, lots of good food, lots of good conversation, not much more to add about that.
Club Auto bills itself as the premier collector car storage and clubhouse facility in the Denver metro area. They have what I’d have to call a showroom area and a warehouse area. Also in the facility is a high-end car detailing business and perhaps an exotic car rental business.
The more notable cars are in the showroom area. On one end are the older cars – mid-20’s Buicks and Rolls Royces. At the other end are a few Indy cars. In between is a variety of cars – Lotuses, Porsches, a Lamborghini, and so on. The most notable here is a Porsche Spyder 550 I’m told has a serial number only one off from James Dean’s car. Moving from the showroom to the warehouse you find a couple Ferraris and some classic Fiats and Fords and a gull-wing Mercedes.
Guests to the party who chose to drive their Lotuses were invited to park in the warehouse. There were only two of us brave enough to do so. The weather forecast was for snow. None had fallen yet, and the weather guy I watched said none was likely to fall before the wee hours of the morning. He was wrong – I drove the Elise home in the snow. It wasn’t cold enough yet to stack up on the streets, though, so it wasn’t a problem.
The warehouse was full of an odd assortment of vehicles. There was a nice early 70’s Lincoln Continental with a panorama roof, a couple of older Porsche 911’s, a Mazda RX-7 with very wide fenders and a huge wing on the back. There were also a surprisingly large number of trucks – Ford F-350’s and such. Not what I think of when I think “collector car storage”.
Sorry for the crappy photos, these were taken with the cell phone.
Mike and I talked about hiking to Pipit Lake. It hadn’t really occurred to me to hike there in winter; I guess I’m still stuck in the “hiking is for summer” mindset. But after trading a few emails on Tuesday, we decided to go the next day. It would be the best weather for at least the next week.
I picked Mike up at the park and ride and we headed to the park. His bus was a few minutes late, and we were in the teeth of rush hour traffic into Boulder so we didn’t exactly get an early start. The Wild Basin entrance station is closed for winter – that is, there is no ranger there. That’s pretty much standard year around, if you arrive early enough. Up the road we go, only to find the gate closed before the road crosses the river. This was new to me. I really had no idea when that gate was ever closed. I thought perhaps it got closed when snow piled up on the road.
We geared up and started up the road. The thermometer read 44 degrees when we left the car at 9:00. On the drive up, the sky was mostly cloudy, with some rather ominous looking dark clouds to the west. At the trailhead, though, it was clear blue skies above us and to the west, with fairly strong winds. It took us twenty minutes to reach the trailhead; we figured we’d hiked a mile already.
We made good time on the first part of the trail to the campsite shortcut. We’d passed a few trees that had fallen across the trail, something I’d not seen here before. Approaching Calypso Cascades, there was a spot where water flows over the trail. There are several logs serving as steps; water had filled the spaces between the logs and frozen making terraces of ice – miniature skating rinks.
From Calypso Cascades to a bit past Ouzel Falls the trail is on a north facing slope and is now covered with ice or packed snow. There’s not much snow on the ground, just on the trail. I don’t know how this season compares to normal, I suspect it might be drier than usual, but it’s still early.
We took a short break at Ouzel Falls. A great mass of ice has built up at the base and it looks like the ice at the left side forms each night and melts during the day. A large chunk fell off while we were sitting there.
Continuing, we paused for a minute or two at the next trail junction, where the Thunder Lake trail goes right and Ouzel/Bluebird goes left. We would soon be atop the ridge which had burned back in 1978 and I anticipated it would be quite windy. Time to put on a hat to keep the ears warm. Gaining the top of the ridge, the wind was breathtaking at times. The occasional gust stopped me in my tracks. There is no shelter on this section of trail, which is not so good when it’s windy or in the summer sun. But it’s always good for the open views of the surrounding mountains.
At the lake I set up the GoPro for a time lapse. I didn’t bother with the SLR as there were very few clouds, just a few small ones above the nearby peaks that dissipated before they moved too far. Also, I found that the original battery for the SLR had died after taking only a handful of shots during the hike to the lake.
We looked for a place out of the wind to have our picnic lunches and ended up at the campsite. No view, but mostly out of the wind. After a short while, I went back to the shore of the lake and retrieved the camera. I had placed it on a rock only an inch or so above the ice. It was the best I could do, but not good enough. The wind had blown it over. I managed to salvage the footage. I didn’t do any fancy cropping to simulate pans or zooms; all the camera motion is caused by the wind. The first segment is at half normal speed (two seconds per minute) while the second segment is normal (one second per minute).
On the way out, we opted to continue a short way up the Thunder Lake trail to the upper junction of the campsite shortcut. It’s always nice to see a little different terrain. I think the shortcut saves six or seven tenths of a mile when hiking to Thunder Lake, but we had to go four tenths to get to it. So the hike out was a few tenths shorter than the hike in. We were also on the sunny side of the valley so we took another short break there.
By now I was figuring we were the only visitors to Wild Basin. I was surprised when we encountered three groups of hikers heading toward Calypso Cascades (two couples and a solo hiker). In retrospect, we probably would have met somebody at Ouzel Falls. We were the first ones to the end of the road in the morning, but when we returned to the car there were about a dozen other cars there. Not alone in Wild Basin, but only meeting five other people on that lower section of main trail is about as much solitude as can be expected.
Ed and I planned on hiking to one of the several glacial knobs in the vicinity of Mills Lake or The Loch. I was going to leave the house by 7:15 or so to meet him at his place. Unfortunately, the Fern Lake fire had been fanned during the night by winds gusting to 75 mph, causing the park to be closed. Highway 66 was closed and everybody west of Mary’s Lake road had been evacuated. The fire burned three miles to the east in a half hour during the early morning hours. The Fern Lake fire has now been burning nearly two months and has consumed over 3500 acres, including Moraine Park.
So Ed suggested a Plan B – we hike to the top of Button Rock Mountain. The trailhead is a short distance up the road to Big Elk Meadows, just past Pinewood Springs on US 36. The hike starts up a rough four-wheel-drive track before heading cross country on a trail Ed has been working on for a couple of decades.
In the lower elevations, forest service crews are clearing the dead trees. First they cut up the dead wood and stack it in cones, very similar to what the park service has done along the roads in RMNP. In the park they’ve been burning the cones when conditions are favorable. Here, though, they use a large chipper. We couldn’t see the chipper in action, as it was on the opposite slope of a ridge we hiked away from, but we heard it operating from the time we put boots on the trail until about lunch time. As we gained elevation we could see the extent of the area already cleared. This is a substantial amount of work.
I wonder how much of a difference it makes clearing the dead trees this way. The wood is still there, just in a different form – chips spread out over the forest floor instead of being in log form. Not as concentrated, closer to the ground, I guess it won’t burn as easily or as hotly.
I’d never have found Ed’s trail without his guidance. The lower part of his trail was covered by chips laid down in the last couple of weeks. Before long, we got to an indistinct trail. As we hiked, he pointed out rocks he’d moved, or trees he’d cut or rearranged. He doesn’t want the trail to be too obvious, but easy enough to follow once you’re on it. When we neared the summit, the trail again became to vague for me to follow without his help. Near the top was a picnic table made from dead trees – trunks sawn in half with a chainsaw.
The view from the top was quite nice – Longs Peak and Twin Sisters pretty much due west; the peaks of Wild Basin to their left, and the summits of the Mummy Range not totally obscured by intervening terrain. All the summits were snow capped and shrouded by clouds. Smoke from the Fern Lake fire was faint but visible, smearing the sky along the horizon.
The peaks to the west are too far away for any interesting time lapse footage from the GoPro. And I’m disappointed once again with battery performance from the SLR. I charged both batteries a couple of days ago. The Canon battery was pretty much dead from the start and the after market battery only lasted for 100 shots.
The hike was a nice change of pace, but all in all I prefer hiking in the park. As I said, we could hear the chipper running continuously for about three hours. Our hike was also punctuated by more or less constant gunfire. And along the four-wheel-drive road there was quite a bit of trash ranging from water bottles and broken plastic to spent shotgun shells and even discarded clothing.
I try to take walks three or four times a week. I went through a stretch where it was never near that often, but at the same time I was hiking more often, so hopefully it evens out a bit. My walk leads me around Lake Arbor, the neighborhood body of water. During the winter, it’s home to skeins of geese and rafts of ducks.
I had to look that up. I always thought “gaggle” of geese, but that’s only what they’re called when they’re on water. In flight, they’re either a skein or a wedge. Ducks are rafts, but there are other group names as well – a team of ducks if they’re flying or a paddling of ducks when they’re on water.
Anyway, there’s generally quite a bit of activity around the lake – fields filled with grazing geese, small groups of ducks swimming in circles, birds landing and taking off, both on land and water. Last week I took the cameras with me and shot some time lapse footage. I was a bit underwhelmed. In retrospect, it wasn’t that interesting of a day to film geese. It was good practice, though, both the shooting and the editing. I posted the video, but I have no doubt I can make a better one if I give it more time.
Today would have been a better day. When I left the house, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the usual three mile loop or cut it off shorter. The walk to the lake is mostly out of the wind, but once to the lake it was obviously quite breezy so I decided I wouldn’t bother making a lap of it. I stopped at the east end, in the trees, and watched the birds.
A gaggle was getting out of the water to graze. The ones already aground were fanning out, beaks pecking the brown grass. Geese were lined up in the water single file, paddling somewhat upwind towards the shore. One after another would hop onto the bricks lining the water’s edge and immediately put beak to lawn. In the water, the wind was pulling the line like taffy, and now the geese were flapping wings to get ashore. Before long they were flying as far as twenty feet. Now the geese still afloat were reconsidering. Two or three turned around and went to the back of the line when their turns came. Eventually the group split, three quarters or so on land, the rest moving out to deeper water. Would have made for a good time lapse sequence.
Usually on these walks I see people walking their dogs, and the usual mix of joggers and retired folks out for a stroll. Today I encountered a guy dragging his roller board suitcase behind him, with a small backpack on lying on the handle. He was barefoot with his pair of shoes dangling from around his neck. Maybe in his early twenties, baseball cap, sunglasses, a couple days of beard. I’m wearing sunglasses and have the brim of my Broncos cap pulled fairly low. I’m wearing big headphones, not the little buds. I’m listening to a BBC business podcast.
I’m wondering where he’s headed. He’s heading south east, so he’s not going to the Park-N-Ride (which is north east). It strikes me as, if not odd, at least unusual. When I pass people I generally give them a nod of hello. As I pass, he hollers out a question – “How many yards did Manning get?”
Okay, I’ll have a short chat about football. I pause the iPod and take off the cans. I give a quick recap of the game and answer his questions. Then he takes his glasses off and introduces himself. Not just first name, but first and last. Asks my name. I tell him “Dave.” “Dave what?” “Just Dave.” He says okay but sort of rolls his eyes, miffed perhaps that I didn’t give him my full name. He then launches into a bit of history. He grew up right over there (waves his arm indicating the general direction). His parents have lived there forever, he has lots of old friends here.
I wonder where this is going. Does he expect me to recognize these names? Next he tells things aren’t going well for him. He’s not close to his family, doesn’t have many friends. He recently got divorced. He just found out he has mouth cancer. Tears well up in his eyes. He hasn’t told these things to his family. “I’m probably not going to live much more than a year.” This is a bit awkward.
He pulls himself together, wishes me a good day and we resume our opposite paths.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been wanting to hike to Tourmaline Lake. It’s in a small canyon west of Odessa Lake, which can be reached from either the Fern Lake or Bear Lake trailhead. I was all set to go there via the Fern Lake route when the fire broke out and every trail north and west of Bear Lake was closed. The Fern Lake trailhead is still closed, but hikers are now allowed to get to Odessa Lake from the Bear Lake side.
Taken from Bear Lake road in Moraine Park.
Once snow is on the ground, I’m less inclined to take the longer hikes. From Bear Lake, Tourmaline Lake is about 4.5 miles. That’s about two-thirds of a mile less than from the Fern Lake trailhead but it’s probably not any easier – the highest point on the trail from Bear Lake is near Two Rivers Lake, which is higher than Tourmaline Lake. Then you descend about 600′ to Odessa before gaining those 600′ back. On the return, you get to do the up and down again.
I didn’t really know how much snow to expect. The updates for the fire said it snowed two inches one day. I figure that probably won’t obstruct the trail but there’s no trail from Odessa to Tourmaline. Also, it’s always pretty windy up there, so two inches of snow could get redistributed in drifts. And always wanting to travel light, I didn’t want to take snow shoes. So I set off toward Tourmaline Lake with the expectation that I might not actually make it there.
The day started off crisp and clear but a bit on the breezy side. I arrived at Bear Lake at about 8:30 and was thinking at first that I might not have dressed warmly enough. I was expecting a fairly warm day for this time of year and wore a couple of shirts and a windbreaker, along with gloves and a knit cap. But I figured it was still pretty early; it would probably get 20 degrees warmer by noon and the hike would get me warmed up. By 8:45 I had my boots on and was on the trail. As I said, I didn’t take snow shoes but I did put my micro spikes in the pack.
The path around Bear Lake was a sheet of ice. The first part of the trail is the same as that for Flattop Mtn. The trail goes up the side of a ridge, initially on the sunny south facing side, then crosses to the north face. Where the sun shines on it, it was covered with ice but once reaching the north face it is just packed snow. There isn’t a lot of snow on the ground yet and the trail is quite easy to follow.
Although I thought I was hiking slower than usual, I reached the Flattop/Odessa trail junction in my usual time. The trail is in forest and affords no views except for a couple of places where you can see Bierstadt Lake and points east. From here the trail bends more to the west along the foot of Flattop Mtn, climbing slowly but steadily. Two Rivers Lake and Lake Helene are off the trail to the left under the craggy north face of Flattop and the dramatic Notchtop.
After catching a glimpse of Two Rivers Lake through the trees, the trail starts to descend slightly. Here the snow was getting a bit deeper on the trail where the wind piled it up in small drifts. The trail makes a sharp turn to the north but all the footprints in the snow headed off the trail towards Lake Helene. I continued along the trail which gets a bit steeper now. Very quickly Odessa Lake came into view, partially frozen over. Also very quickly, the drifts on the trail got much deeper. I decided I can wait to reach Tourmaline Lake until next summer, but I still wanted to go a bit farther down the trail with the idea of getting a better view of the burn area. Alas, there was no end of the deep drifts in sight so I turned around and headed for Lake Helene.
I left the trail a bit before I came to everybody else’s footprints. There is a vague trail that leads to Helene’s outlet stream. Topping this small scramble of rocks I found myself at the northern end of the lake. Winter hiking is still new for me, and I’m still surprised how much lower the water level is compared to spring and summer. I could walk twenty feet or more from the grassy summer shore to the edge of the ice today. And it is solid ice, already supporting my weight.
I walked around the lake taking pictures and looking for a sunny spot on a rock, out of the wind. There aren’t any. I might have been disappointed, if it had been closer to lunch time, or if the sky wasn’t absolutely cloudless. After wandering around for about twenty minutes, I headed back toward Bear Lake.
I thought about stopping at Two Rivers Lake, but figured I’d also fail to find a sunny spot out of the wind and there was no prospect of clouds for an interesting time lapse. And I’d stopped there back in April so it’s not like I haven’t been there recently. I was a bit hungry, though, and didn’t want to wait to eat until I got back to Bear Lake. Before long I found a nice sunny becalmed rock and tucked in.
My sandwich was already a memory when the birds arrived, begging. Two little chickadees (I think; I don’t know birds) were interested in my lunch. I don’t feed the wildlife, at least not intentionally. One bird was quite brave, flitting from one spot to another, all within arm’s length. After a few minutes of this, he got even more brave and landed between my feet and found a crumb of bread I’d dropped.
On my way again, I shortly arrived at a place where the trail traverses a talus field and has a view of Joe Mills Mtn. By now some clouds were forming. I decided to set up the GoPro and grab a quick time lapse. I found myself in the shade with no place to sit down and relax so I wandered up and down the trail a bit to keep warm. There was one spot with a small break in the trees where I could see to the north – a slightly obstructed view of the fire area.
By now it was a very pleasant day; it had warmed up nicely and the winds had died down a bit. Because I was hoping for a longer hike, I was back to the car quite early. And because my little time lapse segment was quite short, I set the camera up with a view of the parking lot and let it run a few minutes.
Not far off the Campsite Shortcut trail, two small lakes lie on a small bench on the hillside. They’re called Twin Lakes presumably due to their being next to each other because they’re not twins in any other regard.
The Foster guide says to take the Campsite Shortcut trail to the Siskin campsite, then head directly uphill 400 vertical feet. I copied that page from the guide and printed out a section of the 7.5′ topo map and headed off. I didn’t bother getting an early start, as it’s a fairly short hike – something like 3.3 miles to the first lake. I decided to make it a loop and visit Ouzel Falls and Calypso Cascades on the way back.
The main trail from the Wild Basin trailhead is a busy and well maintained trail. The first section runs alongside North St. Vrain Creek. Most hikers along this section go only to Calypso Cascades or Ouzel Falls; it’s pretty common to see folks wearing flip-flops and carrying no water. Just before the main trail crosses the creek, there’s a turn off for the campsites – thus the Campsite Shortcut trail. When heading to Thunder Lake or Lion Lake, I always take this route to save some distance and get away from the crowds.
Not being a camper, I never paid much attention to these campsites. So even though I’ve been up and down this trail several times, I needed to watch for the sign to Siskin. I was a bit surprised to reach the Thunder Lake trail junction having only noticed one campsite, and that wasn’t Siskin. Clearly, I was not paying close enough attention, so I turned around and headed back. I didn’t want to go too far, so I decided to just head uphill and use the map to find my way.
Bushwhacking here isn’t that difficult. The slope wasn’t terribly steep, and there wasn’t that much deadfall to deal with. Before long, I had gained quite a bit of elevation. Being in a forest, though, I didn’t have a clear view of any landmarks. I don’t carry GPS so I wasn’t sure where I was in relation to the lakes. At one point I decided I had climbed higher than the lakes, so I zig zagged down a bit. I even thought I saw water once but was mistaken. Next I felt I’d descended too far, so I zig zagged up a bit.
By 12:15 I found myself on a pile of large boulders sitting in the sun with a nice view of the valleys to the west. I decided it was a pleasant enough place to have my lunch and watch the world go by. I set up the SLR for a time lapse ate my sandwich. It only took a few minutes for the battery to discharge completely. Clearly, I’ll need to get the battery grip for the camera if I’m going to get serious with it.
After lunch, I set off in search of the lakes again. I had decided that I was, indeed, a couple of hundred feet too high. So I zig zagged down the slope. It wasn’t long before I had gone down too far and still no sign of the lake. I headed more or less due west intending to meed the Thunder Lake trail to complete my planned loop. The forest floor here was fairly flat and walking was very easy. After a few minutes of walking through this flat area I came across a campsite. I guessed it was Siskin, but saw no signs. Clearly, I wouldn’t find Twin Lakes today. For the rest of the afternoon, U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For kept bouncing around my brain.
Not long after reaching the campsite, I found a trail. I wasn’t sure whether it was the shortcut or the main trail, so I kept going west. When I found a pile of horse dung I knew I was on the main trail, as no livestock is allowed on the shortcut. Except llamas, and I doubted llama dung looked like horse dung. So I turned around. A few hundred yards down the trail I found a sign for the Siskin campsite. Had I known it wasn’t on the shortcut but on the Thunder Lake trail, I have no doubt I’d have found the lakes. I was probably just a few yards east of them at some point.
I hadn’t encountered other hikers since I left the trailhead. From Ouzel Falls back to the trailhead, the trail was much more crowded as expected. Not as crowded as a mid-summer day, but I didn’t go more than five minutes without running into somebody.
At Ouzel Falls I set up both cameras for time lapses. This was an experiment – I didn’t really know what to expect. In the end, though, none of the time lapse footage was worthwhile. The wind moved the tripod during the first SLR segment and I didn’t deal with the lighting at the falls properly.
The weather was quite nice – sunny and warm with a few clouds scattered here and there. It was a bit windy; the pines didn’t so much “whisper” as mildly roar, but on the forest floor the wind was never much of an issue.
For the last week or so I’ve been looking forward to hiking to Tourmaline Lake. Unfortunately, a forest fire started near the Fern Lake trail head and there are a number of trail and road closings. Hopefully they’ll get the fire taken care of in short order but it’s hard to guess when I might be able to make that hike.
Wanting to take advantage of good weather, I scoured the maps and the Foster guide for a Plan B. I didn’t want to hike somewhere I’ve been before and I wasn’t feeling up to a very long hike. After quite a bit of deliberation I decided to hike to Chickaree Lake, an easy 2.6 miles and 480 vertical feet from the Onahu Creek trail head.
Because it was a short hike, I was able to sleep in a bit, even though the trail head is on the west side of the park. For these west side hikes, I generally take I-70 to US 40, over Berthoud Pass and through Winter Park, Fraser, and Tabernash to Granby, then east on US 34 and into the Park. On the way home it’s over Trail Ridge Road to Estes Park and US 36 through Lyons to Boulder and then home. All told, it’s probably five hours of driving depending on traffic on Trail Ridge Road. But it’s a nice loop and can be a fun drive if traffic isn’t too bad.
I hit the trail at 10am. It was not much above freezing, but calm with sunny blue skies and few clouds. The trail starts off more or less parallel to the highway for a short distance, then the highway bends west and the trail bends east. If you get an early start on these west side hikes, you often get to see moose, deer, and elk in the meadows. Today I saw none of these, but did hear a few elk bugling somewhere to the south of me.
The trail passes through lodgepole pine forest, undulating up and down a bit. The trail is often free of rocks and roots and when it gets wet it gets muddy. It was dry except for a few puddles and occasionally in the dried mud I could see the prints of elk who had used the trail. At one spot there was even a bear paw print in the dried mud. It looked like the bear was stalking the elk, but who can really tell? The prints may have been made hours apart.
Beetles have killed a large number of trees in this area. Maybe two-thirds or three-quarters of the trees are dead. In some places, the trees are quite mature, with trunks a foot or more in diameter and spaced twenty feet apart. In other places, the trunks are only four to six inches in diameter and the trees are four to six feet apart. Lodgepole pine are straight and tall with short branches, so even with closely spaced trees the forest is quite sunny.
When researching this hike, I read reports that there are (or used to be) ranger led hikes to this lake as often as twice a week. Even with small groups, if there’s that much traffic to the lake I was expecting to see traces of a trail. The Foster guide says to climb to a specific elevation then head northwest. This elevation would be before the trail crosses Onahu Creek but I didn’t see any sign of a trail to the lake.
Upon reaching the creek, I left the trail and headed northwest. I was making good time – I had expected to take about an hour to get here, but it had been only 35 minutes. According to both the map and the Foster guide, I could expect to cross a tributary of Onahu Creek before long. “Bushwhacking” is the term generally used, but because the forest is thinly vegetated it was a pretty straightforward walk. There is quite a bit of deadfall, but this section of the forest features the smaller trees so it was more stepping over than climbing over them.
After a while I was starting to doubt my pathfinding abilities. I saw no sign of a stream. Perhaps I had read the map wrong. When the trail reached that last stream, there was a sign identifying it as Onahu Creek. Maybe the sign or the map was wrong, and I had turned off too soon? I did seem to reach the creek pretty quickly. And in the forest there are no landmarks to assist in locating myself on the map. Just as I decided I’d turned off the trail too soon, I saw the lake through the trees. I had indeed walked straight to it.
Chickaree Lake lies in this thick forest on a bit of a bench. It has no inlet nor outlet stream and I was somewhat surprised at how big it is. It also has no interesting views. I went around the lake looking for a suitable place to set up the cameras and eat my lunch. I picked a spot and got the cameras up and running. As usual, I brought the GoPro for the time lapse and the SLR for everything else. I also wanted to shoot a time lapse with the SLR as I’ve been unhappy with the GoPro’s extremely wide angle and its lack of viewfinder.
After failing to get the SLR running properly for a time laps on the Sky Pond hike, I was a bit more prepared this time. I brought both batteries (fully charged) and had corrected my error with the intervalometer’s settings. Before long, I noticed that the battery indicator was reading low. A few minutes later it died completely. I swapped batteries and started it running again, keeping a closer eye on the battery indicator. The second battery also was discharging quicker than I expected. I got only 160 shots with the first battery. I didn’t want to run the second one all the way down, so I stopped it after 320.
Unfortunately, the skies weren’t cooperating with me. There was one saucer shaped cloud to the east and it never seemed to move. I made a video using both cameras as a sort of comparison, but the ripples on the lake are probably more interesting than the sky. Oh well.
After packing up my gear, I finished circumnavigating the lake. I figured I had no real chance of retracing my steps so I just headed in the correct general direction. Before long I found what looked like a trail, so I followed it. This didn’t last long – it petered out, but even if it hadn’t, I’d have left it as it was heading too much to the east and uphill. I finally did cross a trickle of water. If this was the tributary the map and guide indicate, I can only assume it’s more substantial earlier in the season.
I made it back to the trail in good order. I found the trail before I found the creek, although I could hear the creek clearly and knew I was quite close. So I returned to the trail about a tenth of a mile above where I left it. The hike back to the car was uneventful. I ran into three pairs of hikers on the way out, nobody on the way in.
For the drive home, I decided it was warm and pleasant and could do the drive topless, so off with the roof. I knew it would be cool and windy on Trail Ridge, but leave the windows up and keep the jacket handy and be ready to turn the heater on if necessary. Traffic was fairly light, being a weekday in October.
I didn’t see any smoke from the Fern Lake fire until I got to the Forest Canyon overlook. I pulled over there and hiked up the road a few hundred yards to try to get a better view.
I thought maybe a better view could be had at Many Parks curve, but the parking area there was cordoned off for use by the firefighters (although none were there at the time).
Here are a couple more views from above Upper Beaver Meadow.
The trail to Sky Pond is fairly heavily traveled and I’ve been there at least three or four times over the years. Lately I’ve preferred to visit lakes I’ve never been to before, and I’ve come to enjoy the relative seclusion many of these hikes have provided. But I was looking at the map the other day and noticed Embryo Lake, just off the trail where Andrews Creek joins Icy Brook. So off to Sky Pond it was, thinking it may be late enough in the season to be less crowded than usual.
I had hoped to hit the trail by 8:30, but I got off to a bit of a late start. And when I arrived at the park entrance, the express pass lane was closed. It’s another free day in the park. The Bear Lake road is now paved almost all the way to Hallowell Park, but now they’ve removed the pavement from there to the park and ride.
From the Glacier Gorge trailhead, Sky Pond is 4.4 miles one way, with a 1,720 foot elevation gain. But because of my late start, and it being free day, but the time I got there Glacier Gorge parking lot was full and the Bear Lake parking lot was getting there. The trip from Bear Lake to Glacier Gorge Junction adds about a quarter mile to the trip, downhill in the morning but uphill after a long hike at the end.
To offset that, I now know where the ‘Fire trail’ is. I’ve seen it on the old maps but it’s not on the new ones, and I never looked that hard for it. Earlier this year I hiked to Frozen Lake with Ed and that’s how we returned. This cuts six tenths off the trip each way, so in the end I hiked more like 8.1 miles round trip.
The trail was quite busy today, except for the Fire trail, where I saw one other hiker in the morning and none in the afternoon. Other than that, I probably didn’t go more than three minutes without seeing or hearing another hiker.
The Fire trail is supposedly unimproved, but it’s about as unimproved as the back way down from Haiyaha – fairly well maintained. I’ve been on the main trail, to Alberta Falls then to the Mills/Loch junction, so many times it’s become a bit of a chore, a trail to push through quickly in the morning and to endure in the afternoons. So it’s a nice change to go another way, particularly as so few use it.
I made it to the Loch in less than an hour. Here is where you first get a nice view of the mountains – the higher elevations dusted with snow the last few nights. The trail winds around the Loch then goes back into the forest. Just after the turn for Andrews Glacier there is a meadow on the left affording a nice view of Powell Peak and Taylor Peak, with Timberline Falls below, glinting in the sun. It is here one makes a side trip to Embryo Lake, but I decide to save this side trip for the way back.
A few minutes further along and the trail starts to climb in earnest, leaving the forest below and the falls above. The trail is a staircase, long and winding up to the right side of Timberline Falls. At the falls you have to use your hands a bit; I caught up to a young couple here and she had some difficulty deciding how to go about it.
I really don’t like this part of the hike. I find it not so bad going up, but I don’t like the descent at all. This time of year, though, it is much less nerve wracking for me as there isn’t as much water flowing and splashing on the rocks. I didn’t have any trouble today.
Glass Lake lies just above the falls. I always used to see it called “Lake of Glass” but that usage seems to have gone away.
It is only another couple of tenths of a mile, another eighty vertical feet to Sky Pond. It has been windy every time I’ve been there, and usually there’s a rich insect life. Today it was windy but I enjoyed my lunch without interference by clouds of gnats. I sat there for half an hour without bothering to set up for a time lapse as there was not a cloud in the sky.
By the time I left, the lake was beginning to get crowded and I ran into another dozen or so hikers on the trail between Glass Lake and Sky Pond. As I said, I had no difficulty descending the falls and before long was back at the Andrews Glacier trail junction. Here, I set off to the south in search of Embryo Lake.
I quickly found a faint trail that led me to an easy crossing of Icy Brook. After skirting some deadfall and circling around a small mound I found a small meadow with a tiny pond. This must be Embryo Lake. I assume it is cleverly named – it is much too small to qualify as a lake in any regard. And based on the grass around it, I’m guessing it doesn’t get much bigger in the spring.
I was back to the Loch a few minutes after one. By now some clouds were popping up over the divide. I found a nice rock outcropping with a view and set up the cameras. As usual, I brought the GoPro. And this was my first time playing with the intervalometer for the SLR. Problem was, I hadn’t taken the time to figure out how to work it, so nothing came out. To top it off, the battery I popped in the SLR this morning indicated fully charged, but clearly it wasn’t as it died completely within minutes.
Here’s the short clip from the GoPro. Not very good – aimed too close to the sun.
Timetable
Out
In
Trailhead
09:00 AM
02:35 AM
Mills/Loch jct
09:35 AM
02:00 AM
The Loch
09:55 AM
01:05 AM
Andrews jct
10:20 AM
12:30 PM
Glass Lake
10:55 AM
12:10 PM
Sky Pond
11:15 AM
11:45 AM
The side trip to Embryo Lake took only 15 minutes, and I spent a half hour shooting time lapse at the Loch on the return trip.
Had another track day with CECA at HPR. The first CECA event at HPR this year was the “official” LOCO track day but we had a good turnout of Lotuses today as well – if I didn’t miscount, it was seven Elises (BRG, LRG, blue, black, Storm Titanium, red, orange), an Exige (orange), an Elan, and two Caterhams. I was mildly surprised and happy to see three Ferraris out as well. Plus the usual CECA participants – a couple of Corvettes, a handful of Mustangs, some Porsches, a Viper, and so on.
I invited Scott out for a ride and he brought Nicole. They both had a ride with me and managed to get rides in other cars as well. I think they had a good time – they stayed a bit longer than their original plan. I assume that’s a good sign.
Michael was kind enough to be my support crew. We loaded the gear into his truck last night and hit the road by 6:15 this morning so I could get the slicks mounted up in time for tech inspection. On the drive to the track, we drove into a pretty sunrise, with the sun right over the highway. Once we got the slicks on, I headed to the tech inspection line and Michael crawled into the truck for a nap.
Scott rode with me for the first session. I cut it a couple of laps short because I started hearing a noise in right-hand turns. I couldn’t see anything amiss, so went back out for the second session with Nicole as a passenger. She had arranged a ride in a Viper, so I dropped her off after a few laps. The noise was still there, but not as bad, and I shortly decided I was just getting a bit of rubbing.
Third session was after lunch. Michael rode with me for that one, and about six laps in he was wanting out. This is twice now he’s been getting queasy on the track. I blamed the last time on the big bumps at the CSP track. No such excuse this time.
Michael had to leave the track early to make is evening plans, so after three sessions we put the street wheels back on. For the fourth session, I had Jason (LRG Elise) ride with me. He was driving in the blue group, so I then rode with him. It was quite interesting noting the differences in how we get around the track. For the most part, we get on the brakes and throttle at about the same spots and for most turns we follow the same line. But I’m a gear higher in almost every turn than he is. And with our fairly comparable street tires, we’re running pretty much the same lap times. My biggest take away is that I need to learn turns 4 and 10 better. He carries much more speed through both.
In the three sessions with slicks, my fast time was 2:12.64 according to the video tape. I also managed two laps in the 2:13’s and two in the 2:15’s. On street tires, I ran eight laps, six of which were less than 2:21.
Over all, it was perhaps my most enjoyable day at the track.
I went to Everett, Washington on business this week. Ah, the glamor of business travel. I stayed at the Holiday Inn downtown, with a gorgeous 7th floor view of I-5. The weather couldn’t have been much nicer – a bit of fog that burned off by mid-morning, then sunny cloudless days.
Tuesday I went for a fish dinner in Mukilteo. Ivar’s is right next to where the ferry to Whidbey Island docks and about a block from Mukilteo Lighthouse Park. I ordered their “World Famous” fish and chips. Couldn’t help but notice the menu said “Fresh Fish Flown in Daily”. Struck me as a little funny; the restaurant is right on the water, but their fish is shipped in. Pretty sure the fries were frozen, but it was a nice meal. From my seat I could watch the ferry load and unload. The ferry came about every half hour. It’s a double-decker. I don’t know how many cars it holds, but I counted about 120 getting on while I ate. Plus pedestrians and motorcycles.
After I ate I checked out the lighthouse and the park. I watched a couple more ferries cross paths. The sun was setting, a man was fishing with his young boy, people sat around fires by the water. As it got darker, a line of boats came into the boat slip. It was a pretty sunset, with a crescent moon setting as well, over the distant peaks of the Olympic peninsula.
Thursday I drove up to Bellingham to have dinner with Phil. Hadn’t seen him for a couple years, it was good to visit with him. Bellingham is something like 60 miles from Everett. Phil is in Vancouver, BC, so we met half way. I told him I’d be at the restaurant by 6:30. Left the client’s office at 5:30, brought up the navigation on the phone and saw that with traffic it would take me an hour and a half to get there. As luck would have it, Phil had to wait a while at the border crossing so we arrived at pretty much the same time. It was a pleasant drive up I-5 along the coast of the Sound with nice views all around, once I got out of traffic.
I ended up with Friday off. There was a little mix-up with scheduling – the client wanted me there all week, but then they realized they had a charity thing going on Friday and they wouldn’t be able to meet with me. I decided to see if I could walk up to get a tour of Boeing, then head to the airport and see if I could get an earlier flight. On the way, if the weather was good, maybe I’d go up to the observation deck of the space needle and get a picture of downtown Seattle with Mt. Rainier in the background.
So Friday morning I headed over to sign up for the Boeing tour. They recommend buying tickets online in advance, but it looked like they had plenty of open spots for the 10am. In the lobby, they want you to use a kiosk to buy your tickets. Two of the three were out of order, and the working one got stuck in a loop after I put my credit card in: the little hourglass icon would spin for 30 seconds, then a screen appeared asking if I was still there. Lather, rinse, repeat. Defeated by technology again, I had to resort to a human. And who knows how many times my credit card got charged.
The tour was pretty cool. They run one every half hour. A short film (out of date), then off in two groups to buses. They take you to the assembly building, the largest building in the world. Eight big doors, each the size of an NFL football field. The building is rectangular, with the short side measuring a third of a mile. They herded us down some steep steps into a service tunnel, then half that third of a mile to a service elevator that fit a busload of people at a time.
From the basement up past the first floor, mezzanine, second floor, to the third floor and onto an observation balcony over the 747 production line. The tour guide gave us the highlights – two planes a month are built, the 747-8. Six million individual parts, half of them fasteners. The stages of production – how the wings are assembled, then the fuselage, and finally to “weight on wheels”.
Next we went back down the elevator, back down the tunnel, back to the bus where we rode half the length of the building to the 787 production line. Then down more stairs, hike another 1/6 mile to another elevator and to a third floor balcony.
The 787 is assembled from components shipped in from other factories. They arrive on modified 747’s, parts as big as fuselage sections. They use special equipment to unload the planes and cart the parts to the assembly building. There, the put it all together and produce five 787’s a month and will be ramping up to ten a month soon. They’ve done something like 25 so far, mostly going to Japan (ANA and JAL).
I thought it was a pretty cool tour and I’m glad I had the chance to go. No photography allowed on the tour, of course. Not even cell phones allowed.
After that, it was south on I-5. After four days of ideal weather, things reverted to what I assume is more normal – overcast and damp. No point in making the detour to the space needle, so it was straight to SEA-TAC and the glamor of returning a rental car, going through security, and hanging out in the concourse for a couple hours. But I did get that earlier flight.
Club Auto bills itself as the premier collector car storage and clubhouse facility in the Denver metro area. They have what I’d have to call a showroom area and a warehouse area. Also in the facility is a high-end car detailing business and perhaps an exotic car rental business.
showroom area. On one end are the older cars – mid-20’s Buicks and Rolls Royces. At the other end are a few Indy cars. In between is a variety of cars – Lotuses, Porsches, a Lamborghini, and so on. The most notable here is a Porsche Spyder 550 I’m told has a serial number only one off from James Dean’s car. Moving from the showroom to the warehouse you find a couple Ferraris and some classic Fiats and Fords and a gull-wing Mercedes.
Guests to the party who chose to drive their Lotuses were invited to park in the warehouse. There were only two of us brave enough to do so. The weather forecast was for snow. None had fallen yet, and the weather guy I watched said none was likely to fall before the wee hours of the morning. He was wrong – I drove the Elise home in the snow. It wasn’t cold enough yet to stack up on the streets, though, so it wasn’t a problem.
The warehouse was full of an odd assortment of vehicles. There was a nice early 70’s Lincoln Continental with a panorama roof, a couple of older Porsche 911’s, a Mazda RX-7 with very wide fenders and a huge wing on the back. There were also a surprisingly large number of trucks – Ford F-350’s and such. Not what I think of when I think “collector car storage”.
