This morning, I headed north of town to hike some of Crested Butte's most scenic trails. The plan was to take the road up to Gothic, do some hiking up there, then come back down to Snodgrass (which is a hilarious name).
Of course, I derail my own plans with alarming frequency. I made it just a little bit up the road past Snodgrass before deciding that I just absolutely, positively had to hike Snodgrass first. There were just way too many amazing flowers to justify going to any other place first.
I parked Jane and headed up the Snodgrass Trail, veeing off onto Teddy's Trail shortly to head across a meadow festooned with an almost garish display of wildflowers. I'm not a flower expert by any means, so I'll just say that I counted more than 15 types of flowers with a huge array of shapes and colors ranging from a deep winey purple to a brilliant goldenrod.
I ran into another hiker on the trail, who informed me with all the jaded attitude of a local that the flowers were "just a little past their prime, what a shame". Being an out-of-towner, I couldn't see the distinction. I thought they were simply amazing. But what do I know.
The trail meandered through meadows and shady aspen groves, up steep hills and down into woody hollows, and I found myself more and more grateful that I had decided to come up to Crested Butte.
Other hikers came and went, cheerfully proclaiming that they were "flower freaks" or just fellow appreciators of the outdoors. Eventually the trail looped back on itself, and I found myself back at the trailhead, feeling refreshed and ready for another hike.
Jane and I trundled up the dirt road to Gothic, taking in the incredible scenery. There are few sights better than Colorado in high summer, that's for sure.
Gothic is home to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, a longstanding bastion of biological research rivaled by few other places in the States. I stopped by their visitor center to learn some about the place, though unfortunately I wasn't able to take a tour. Though the town gives the appearance of being an old abandoned mining town, it is home to a hive of over 200 researchers every summer, all working together to tease apart the secrets of the Rockies.
A large focus of RMBL's work has been on the interactions between bees and flowers, and my hike around Snodgrass had enlightened me as to why. There are probably few places in this world where such a huge diversity of pollinators and pollinated exist. In a world of declining bee populations due to fragmenting habitats, pollutants, insecticides, and climate change, Crested Butte is a refuge and a paradise. But according to the biologists, even paradise is in decline, with a longer growing season separating the growth of spring and fall flowers, leaving bees hungry in between. It's easy to see why RMBL's work is so important, and I couldn't help but think that the bees here are probably better cared for than most other places in the world. As I spend so much of my time in nature, I also spend a lot of time worrying about climate change and its impact on the beautiful places in the world. I found it comforting to see that here, at least, there are hundreds of researchers all pushing towards greater understanding and future conservation efforts.
After sitting outside the lab's visitor center for a while thinking about things, I headed north of Gothic to the Judd Falls trailhead for a nice waterfall hike. I've got to say, while it was nice, it had nothing on Snodgrass! Waterfalls just can't compare to the vibrance of wildflowers in summer. The scenery at the tailhead, on the other hand, definitely gave Snodgrass a run for its money.
I headed back to Chris's place mid-afternoon to say my goodbyes and wait out a few rain showers. Then we struck out west, pausing only briefly to look at some cool rocks.
Eventually we arrived at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison south rim campground, my first campsite stop of the trip. Being up there felt like being on top of the world. The wind whistled sharply through the low bushes, reminding me of the impending rain that threatened to ruin my planned pre-dinner hike. So after setting up camp, I double-timed it out to the Rim Rock Trail to get my first view of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
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| I also saw some nice flowers along the way. |
As first impressions go, the Black Canyon makes a pretty awe-inspiring statement. It's kind of obscured until you get right up to it, and then a wave of vertigo sweeps through you and all you can think is, "Whoa, that's a really big hole in the ground."
The canyon is composed mostly of schists, gneisses, and granite dikes, which all present somewhere on the "light brown to dark brown to gray" part of the spectrum. Consequently, it is nearly impossible to pick out all of the details, the folds and divots in the canyon. The longer you look, the more you can see - and the more you feel like you're about to be sucked in. It's unnerving, but in a really amazing way. Having been to the Grand Canyon before, I can say that the type of rock and general orientation of the banding makes a HUGE difference in how it makes you feel. The Grand Canyon feels vast and expansive in a comforting kind of way. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison feels vast and expansive in a gaping-maw-inexplicably-possessing-a-magnetic-field kind of way.
As the sun set, I headed back to camp, not anxious to be adjacent to such a big cliff in the dark. And it was at that point that I found that I had, by sheer luck, picked a campsite with a view that looked out hundreds of miles across the plateau. So, I was treated to a magnificent sunset with rain bands slowly moving through, a spectacle best watched from the top of the world.
Tomorrow, I'll see more of the canyon, but this seems a fitting place to end for the day. Kelly signing out.
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