Ahh, the Rockies... Fierce creatures hunted us throughout our stay and shuttle buses umm, shuttled us to trails. The bear attack alert level was in the bright orange (or was it yellow?) and rangers were everywhere in their camo green uniforms and M16's. This mighty creature (with his fierce fangs) would likely have attacked and slayed us, we were told, if Ben hadn't dropped his food and ran. Good job Ben.
On our first day we decided to hike up one of the mountains. It wasn't as if we had much of a choice. You're surrounded by awesome mountains and the hardest part (after the climbing) is picking which mountain trail to take. We decided to hike to Flattop, an 8 mile trip with a change of elavation of 2800 feet. I think the final elavation was around 12,000. The pictures below are from that hike.
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We were about halfway up by this point. This picture is only part of the view... |
| Same place, only looking up this time. Caught a wild creature in this photo. |  |
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That white stuff is the distance??? Yep, that's snow, and yep, it was August. |
| Having trouble finding out how to rotate pictures, sorry about that. The view is worth the awkward viewing postion.. |  |
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Yeahhh... |
| A view from the top. It was very windy up here and as you can see there are still higher peaks in the distant. The weather is interesting as you climb a mountain. At first it was hot and we were working up a good sweat. It cooled off quite a bit as we climbed, especially when we broke through the tree level and had no protection from the wind. As we neared the top we were suddenly being pounded by large pieces of hail. I thought it was great! |  |
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One last look from the top. It was definitely worth the climb. |