{"id":3833,"date":"2018-10-04T16:27:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T22:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/?p=3833"},"modified":"2018-10-04T16:27:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T22:27:51","slug":"40-18-25-n-109-39-37-w-or-thereabouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/2018\/10\/40-18-25-n-109-39-37-w-or-thereabouts\/","title":{"rendered":"40\u00b0 18′ 25″ N, 109\u00b0 39′ 37″ W, or Thereabouts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things have been a bit on the slow side at work lately. With summer hiking season winding down, I figured I could pick a day with a favorable weather forecast to take some PTO and hit the trails. The weather wonks in the Denver area have been missing their forecasts lately, predicting warmer weather than we’ve actually been getting, so this added a bit of variability. They told me Wednesday would be the warmest day for the foreseeable future so Tuesday afternoon I asked for Wednesday off.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, October 3<\/h2>\n

I planned on a rather short hike, which meant I didn’t need to leave the house before sunrise. But a later start also meant I’d be facing morning rush hour traffic. As I work from home I almost never have to deal with traffic, so getting out in it once in a while is a good reminder as to how spoiled I am.<\/p>\n

The Chrysler is getting old, and it sitting outside isn’t helping much. She’s getting senile. I can’t use the automatic headlights because every now and then they start flashing randomly. And the intermittent wiper often gives two or three wipes at a time. And so, when I saw the outside temperature reading at 73\u00b0 on the approach to Estes I figured that was wrong, but the thermometer doesn’t yet seem to be demented. It did cool back down dramatically as I got closer to the Park.<\/p>\n

On the way through town I spotted what I thought of as a clear-sky rainbow. I know that you don’t get rainbows without rain, but this one looked to be situated well away from any clouds. It was clear above, and the only clouds in sight were draped across the Continental Divide. Well, “socked in” more adequately describes it. Nothing above about 11,000′ was visible.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was a bit surprised by how many people were in the park, given that it’s a weekday. The Bear Lake parking lot wasn’t yet full (but it was full when I left a bit after 1:00pm). This time of year I expect mostly locals, but there were still quite a few cars with Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, and California plates.<\/p>\n

When I got out of the car it wasn’t particularly chilly, but it was (surprise, surprise!) fairly windy. By now I treat “windy” as the default state of things along the Divide, unless it’s mid-Summer, and sometimes even then. I wasn’t going very far, and I wasn’t exactly going to visit a lake; my intention was to spend my time surrounded by trees, so I didn’t let the wind bother me. But I didn’t put too much thought into exactly where<\/em> those trees would be. My destination was the ridge that separates Dream Lake from Lake Haiyaha.<\/p>\n

I took the shortcut from Bear Lake to Nymph Lake not so much to shorten the walk as to avoid the crowds. Rather than hustle up the Haiyaha trail, I followed the trail the few yards to the shore of Dream Lake. The clouds were impenetrable over the divide but the fierce winds that carried them east also tore them apart. To the east the skies were clear, and in the zone in between, the sun was able to play “now you see me, now you don’t” with the lakes. A few minutes patience allowed me a view of a sunny Dream Lake with clouds above.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After another quick pause to take in the views to the east, I left the trail before crossing Haiyaha’s outlet stream. There’s a bit of a trail here that gets used by the rock climbers that lasts until you reach talus. Once in the rocks I started heading uphill. It’s not too steep and there isn’t much to hinder progress – little deadfall and no rock outcroppings – and found myself at the top of the ridge in no time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I sat up there for about an hour, letting the cameras run. I tried to stay out of the wind, but here at 10,472′ (according to GPS) it was a challenge. I found a place that wasn’t too bad. I kept an eye on the lake. For the last year or a bit more it has a distinctly glacial color to it. There was a slide a while back up the canyon and the snowmelt that passes over and through the slide has carried some sediment to the lake that gives it a turquoise color when viewed from above in sunlight. But every time the sun illuminated the lake it was over before I could capture that nice color. That just gives me an excuse to revisit this spot next summer, even though the color is already fading.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I made it back to the car pretty early so I decided to make a stop at Sprague Lake. I can’t help but notice that it hasn’t been on my list of lakes I’ve visited. Thinking about that oversight it occurs to me that I certainly haven’t been there in at least thirty years. That makes me wonder if I’ve ever actually been there. I’ve got to believe we were there as a family when I was a kid. Right? How can I have spent so much time in the Park, driven by the place hundreds of times, and never been there?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I took my time at Sprague. I let the camera run again for another half hour or so. The wind was not any less here than on the ridge above Haiyaha, particularly on the windward side. I was surprised the wind didn’t jostle my camera, as it was enough to kick up spray from the lake’s surface and unbalance the unwary pedestrian. The clouds were no longer obscuring the peaks but it wasn’t clearing up. If anything, they looked more threatening. Until you turned around and faced east, where it remained sunny.<\/p>\n

The weather forecast turned out to be spot on. At roughly 3:30 I was mired in Boulder’s afternoon rush hour in balmy 83\u00b0 sunshine.<\/p>\n

I was hoping for better results on the time lapse. The Sprague Lake portion came out fine, with the possible exception of some spray hitting the lens. But the ridgetop sections don’t show any of the details of the clouds. The GoPro is just too wide-angle, and with the auto exposure it doesn’t handle changing light well at all. I haven’t been using the SLR since the cheap little tripod I was using broke. I guess I need to find a new tripod.<\/p>\n