On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
There are issues with the form; I’ll work on them next week.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
From valued commenter StringOnAStick, pictures from wonderful Colorado:
These 4 photos are from a hike up Mt. Massive in the early summer. The
Pika is a little hard to see but given how hard it is to see a cell phone
screen in the bright glare of the sun (and with age-related far sightedness
too), I was just aiming in the general direction and hoping I got it right;
so, pretty close. The Mountain Goat and her baby were so used to hikers
that they didn’t seem concerned at all about the number of people hiking to
the summit; they weren’t very far off the trail though there is a bit of
zoom in use here to get that photo. The other two photos are looking
towards the SW from the upper trail,
And then, there were more!
Hi again!
I decided to send another set of photos of a different area, much less easy
to access than Mt. Massive, plus also a geologic oddity that is common in
the Front range area. I’m a former geologist and while it is a lousy way
to make a living, it’s a great hobby.
These photos are of an Inselberg terrain found at the southern end of the
Lost Creek Wilderness near Tarryall Reservoir, Colorado. I did a little
research to make sure I was correctly using Inselberg as the proper term
for these odd granite features and it seems that the consensus on how these
form has gotten a bit more broad than when I was hearing about them in
graduate school in the late 1980’s. You might remember seeing lots of
areas in the Front Range that had these outcrops of granite boulders that
often look like they were stacked somehow or had little pools eroded out of
the top. I was told in school that these are a remnant of the Eocene
tropical weathering environment, at least in the Front Range area from
Colorado Springs up into southern Wyoming. The explanation I was given is
that the wet tropical climate and resulting humic acids, combined with
existing fractures in the ancient precambrian granite are what “rotted”
away the surrounding rock and when the climate dried out and the crumbled
rock eroded away, what was left behind are these stacked boulders
terrains.
No need to post this explanation since it isn’t much of one or may be more
than anyone who isn’t a geologist would care about; I just found this one
area to be the best example I’ve ever seen of such a terrain and it is
truly a magical area. After a long steep hike, we arrived at this upper
plateau and that is where all these photos were taken; the landforms are
otherworldly.
So – my father was a geologist, maternal grandfather was a geologist, and all I could think of, almost every day when I lived in Canon City (Colorado), was how much both of them would have killed to have had the chance to live there and be able to explore things on a whim. I am decidedly NOT a geologist – my father made me swear not to pursue his path – but I have lots of love and old-school appreciation for the earth’s history, laid bare in the West and so many other places around the world. So thanks for these great pictures, and please do send more!
Have a great day, weekend, and New Year’s Eve, everyone. It pleases me to offer my favorite joke this time of year: “see you next year!”
One again, to submit pictures: the form is broken so Send an Email
Mary G
I have never heard of a pika before and he or she is adorable. Momma mountain goat looks like she is molesting – do they shed winter fur? Baby goat is adorable too.
Off to Google these pressing questions.
P.S. I also like the rocks. Geology is cool. Trump seems very small and sad on that scale.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Nice shots, StringOnAStick. I like that you managed to get pretty good sky definition in the first shot.
In the see you next year…a Holiday Picture of Downtown LA.
Schlemazel
Nice pictures! In all the times we have hiked in Colorado I have yet to see a mountain goat, it is on my list to see at least one someday.
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
Autocorrect done played a dirty trick on ya.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Maybe momma mountain goat is related to Trump.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Schlemazel: A couple of years ago, I was hiking in the Verdugos(mountains just north of us) and saw two deer crossing the trial about 25 yards in front of me. I managed to get a picture of one of them, the other one climbed up the hill(actually more like a clift) along the road.
My next hike on the same trail a few days later I saw something a bit less friendly. I saw what appeared to be a stick in the trail(actually a fire road), then I noticed that the end of the stick looked like it had rattles on it. I encouraged Mr. Rattlesnake to move off into the grass along side the trail.
Betty Cracker
Nice photos! I especially like the goats. :)
Schlemazel
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
My only fear of rattlesnakes is that we don’t notice each other & I accidentally step on one & get bitten. As the snakehandlers of Tennessee have proven, getting bitten by a rattlesnake is very very rarely fatal and you do have to provoke them. I worry much more about mountain lions. My guess is you would never see one and certainly would not hear it until it was on top of you. They have attacked humans in California. If they got a person about your only hope is they kill you quickly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Schlemazel: Well Mr. Rattlesnake was in the middle of the trail and I didn’t have my walking stick with me; also there were mountain bikers that were going to be coming down so it was best that he not be in the middle of the trail. Mountain lions usually aren’t out in the daytime, but you’re right they can be quite dangerous. There aren’t that many in the lower foothills, there’s one in Griffith Park, P-22, and maybe one or two in the Verdugos. While they have been know to attack humans, they usually don’t.
danielx
@Schlemazel:
Always liked the alias used in the south for snakes of all varieties….Mr. No-shoulders.
rikyrah
The pictures are beautiful.?
Raven
Wall to wall Dawgs at the atl airport!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Raven: Someone, Call the Pound!
(Have a nice flight out to sunny Southern California.)
opiejeanne
Beautiful photos. At what elevation were these photos shot? I tend to fall apart above 8000 feet which I think is about the highest I’ve ever climbed on a hike.
That Mt Massive goes up above 14k, only a few feet shorter than Mt Whitney. Mr opiejeanne climbed Whitney many years ago when he was 21.. *does some figuring*.. 50 years ago. Before I met him. I’m still thoroughly impressed by that feat of his. I start getting a headache at 6000 feet.
opiejeanne
Agnew Lake in the Eastern Sierras. 8500 feet. I’ve been at a higher altitude in a car but I managed to hike to that from the Rush Creek Trail on the June Lake Loop. I had a sunburn like nobody’s business even with sunscreen. This was also many years ago, when I was young and there was no SPF 10000
cope
As the stepson of a geologist, former geologist myself (before I got into teaching) and former resident of Colorado, your pictures are a wonderful tonic for starting the day.
Thank you.
Victor Matheson
I am a veteran of all 55 14,000 ft peaks in Colorado. Great to see a pic from Massive. Was turned back at 13,900ft by a raging June blizzard the first time I tried the peak, but I got it the second time.
BTW, the pika is Colorado’s own climate change polar bear. It only lives above 12,000 ft or so and there is genuine worry that warming temperatures will drive it to higher and higher elevations and there is only so far up to it can go before it runs out of mountains in CO at 14,400 ft.
Second interesting piece of fauna science is that the hearty mountain goat in the picture is actually not native to Colorado. It was introduced to the state about 100 years ago and has, not surprisingly, flourished. I don’t think anyone would go so far to call it an invasive species, but it wasn’t anywhere in the state a century ago.
Victor Matheson
@Schlemazel: The mountain goats, being an introduced species, have a fairly limited range. Try hiking around Mt. Evans or Mt. Shavano. I have at least one great mountain goat pic taken on the ridge between Mt. Bierstadt (named after the great painter) and Mt. Evans. (That’s a nasty ridge, so be prepared to not go the whole way across.)
Raven
@Victor Matheson: We were once about 100 yards from the peak of Mt Quandry when a summer storm blew in and we skeeedaddled!
debbie
Absolutely beautiful! You don’t see shit like this in Ohio!
opiejeanne
@Raven: You were smart. We lose people every summer on Mt Rainier. It’s another at 14,411 feet and has its own climate and the weather is unpredictable.
cope
@Raven: My first attempt on Quandary Peak was also unsuccessful. Everyone else made it and, on the way down, recommended I not carry on alone. As it was a December climb, cold and windy but clear, I didn’t need any convincing and started back down with the group.
On the way down, we were off the crest of the ridge, trying to stay out of the wind. Crossing a small wind-packed snow field, I lost my footing and took off toward the rocks below at an astonishingly high velocity. Feet first and on my back, I saw in my mind’s eye the cartoon sequences for doing a self arrest I had once read in “Mountaineering, Freedom of the Hills”. I did everything perfectly and slid to a stop. Oh yeah, I was the only person in the group carrying an ice axe, a long wooden one my college sweetie gave me as a gift.
I returned the following summer and soloed it.
Miss Bianca
PIKA!!
Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen one! My favorite place to go pika-viewing is up at Lost Lake, now inaccessible for the winter as it is off Kebler Pass, the mountain road between Crested Butte and Somerset, and now ass-deep in snow, no doubt, even with the relatively mild winter we’ve been having. Great photos!
Victor Matheson
@cope: Fantastic use of the ice axe! Have used the ice axe on quandary to slide nearly the whole way from the summit to the base. Climbed Mt. Rainier as well. Way longer than anything in Colorado, nearly 30 hours of climbing.
My climbing partner of nearly 30 years died last summer of a heart attack about 300ft from the summit of Mt. Harvard. We haven’t had a chance to go back up the mountain to spread some ashes yet, but another Colorado climb is probably in the cards for next summer.
MomSense
Beautiful photos.
cope
@Victor Matheson: I’m sorry to hear about your climbing partner. The Collegiates were one part of the state I never climbed in. I hope you are able to accomplish your goal of returning some of your partner’s remains to the Earth next summer.
Steve in the ATL
My stepsister was a geologist. Graduated from Duke in the ‘70’s and went to work for Exxon, searching Alaska for certain geological formations they were likely to indicate the presence of oil.
A couple of years into her career, someone wrote a computer program that perforned that function better than humans, and that entire career field disappeared overnight.
Hopefully no one is writing an app that fights with union thugs.
StringOnAStick
Thanks everyone for the nice comments, and Victor, so sorry about your friend.
I’ll try to answer all the various questions. Yes, the mountain goat momma is shedding her winter fur, I kept finding clumps of it in the willow bushes as we climbed higher. I was surprised she still had so much to shed given that this was nearly midsummer. All of the first set of photos were taken at above 12,000 feet, and the Pika population seemed fairly robust, which is so nice to see since as Victor said, they are our polar bears as far as climate change impacts go. The good news is I’ve seen more Pika’s in the last 4 years than ever before so I don’t know if their colonies are becoming larger but less common or if I’ve just been lucky recently.
Quandry and Mt. Massive are great spring skis, some of our favorites but as with everything else, global climate change is making it much, much harder to find good spring skiing conditions because it doesn’t get cold enough at night for long enough anymore to form good spring corn snow. What used to be a 6 week end of season period of climbing and skiing as many 13,000′ – 14,000′ peaks is now maybe a couple of weeks with much poorer conditions.
As far as rattlesnakes go, growing up in western Colorado I never saw one, but we see at least one every year in the various city, county and state parks on the western side of Denver. I’ve never been rattled at, but my husband was last year and he said he finally understands what “the hair stood up on the back of my neck” means. Mostly they don’t want anything to do with you because you are too big to eat but if they feel threatened all bets are off. A young man who had just completed his first Ironman competition died here this summer after stepping on one while out trail running. He and his buddy ran back to their car and they suspect the running is what circulated the poison quickly and did him in. The doctors did say it was really rare for a human to die from a rattlesnake bite and if bitten, keep the victim calm and still.
And Alain, your dad was smart to guide you away from geology. Like I said, it’s a great hobby but the jobs are either plentiful or nonexistent even if you have nothing to do with extractive resources (I was a groundwater geologist doing environmental work). A few too many “nonexistent” periods are why I changed careers, as did just about every single person I went to college with did sooner or later. Ah well, its a great hobby, especially in Colorado!
Miss Bianca
@Victor Matheson: your partner died on Mt Harvard? I think I heard about that – the Collegiates are more or less in my backyard. My condolences.
We lose people in the Needles,over by Crestone, every summer, but that’s mostly due to accidents – because I think people completely underestimate how treacherous the footing is up there. I would never try it, personally. I’ve done some climbing, but bagging fourteeners ain’t my thing. If I’m going to die thrill-seeking, I’m going to die foxhunting.