This story isn't so very domesticated but I have no other place to showcase my "non-SOR" photography which makes this blog somewhat of a catch all. Hopefully you'll enjoy the pretty pictures and not hate me for recanting an undomesticated story.
I always thought I wanted to move west. I love the mountains in North Carolina and I thought that the Rockies would be that much better. So for our honeymoon, when Steven suggested Colorado as a destination, I was on board. That was the first time I visited Breckenridge (October of 2010). If you're never been, let me tell you, it's adorable. A cute little main street surrounded by quaint shops and good eats. Dogs are allowed pretty much everywhere and most people are charming. Especially if you're buying something. But you know what didn't charm me?
The mountains.
I KNOW! String me up and beat me. How dare I say such nasty things about the Rockies. I must be crazy. I'm not, I swear I have legitimate reasons. For one, my least favorite tree (yes I have a least favorite tree) is pine. Which grows all over the mountains. Yay. Secondly, without snow on the peaks they're just kinda...gray. Bleh. Thirdly, we were there in fall, and it was supposed to be glorious. You know what it was? Yellow. Yellow, green and gray. How can that compare to the vast array of color you get in the Appalachians/Smokies/Adirondacks?! Granted, the mountains are beautiful in their own right and I did enjoy watching the sun slowly creep over their peaks every morning (that's glorious). But I did not swoon.
Regardless when someone suggested a skiing trip in Colorado (that might have been me actually) and Breckenridge was brought up as an option, I was all for it. I wanted to see those mountains in winter. This time I was not disappointed. The mountains were breathtaking. This was the second time I visited Brekcnridge (February of 2013). The town was just as quaint and lovely. I may have seriously damaged my tailbone while learning to snowboard but it was a blast and I want to go back.
The third and most recent time I've been to Breckenridge was a few weeks ago. Unfortunately Steven was not able to join me for this trip. It felt almost wrong to go to Breck without him. I was there to attend a class on stream restoration taught by Dave Rosgen. I'd been looking forward to this class for over a year. As usual, the class kept us very busy but they gave us one day to enjoy Breck and I managed to convince a few guys (the majority of the class was guys. I was one of three women) in my class to join me on the Mohawk Lakes hike so I could finally reach the upper lake.
It had snowed a few days before and it wasn't necessarily warm in the shade but we managed and we made it! I really enjoyed seeing the mountains a little differently. With the snow peaks and the ice. It was nice that everything wasn't exactly the same as before. Onto the pictures!
Here's 3 of the 4 guys that I was able to convince to join me. Don't get the wrong impression from the shorts and t-shirts. It was cold. They're just crazy. This was Adam, Graydon and Jace.
Old mining relics. This one actually had some stuff left in it. It was also at this point that our old friendly birds start to join us. At one point Adam from Tennessee was sitting eating almond butter from a spoon and had rested his hand on his knee while chatting with us. One of those birds actually inched up and took a bite of almond butter from his spoon! Crazy birds!
I give you, Lower Mohawk Lake. Semi frozen.
Like I said, my goal was to get to the Upper Mohawk Lake. Unfortunately, we'd lost the trail. So we thought, like any educated people would think, the water for the lower lake must be coming from the upper lake, so let's just follow the water to find the upper lake. There was no trail that way...we scaled the friggin mountain. We're idiots. But after some heart pounding accents and too close of calls, we managed to find this guy. This is the upper most Mohawk Lake.
This lake was completely frozen over. It was easily in the teens and the wind was howling, I was frozen. We didn't linger long. On our way back down we stumbled upon the actual trail. Yeah...there was a trail. I told you we were idiots. Oh something neat about the trail...it had snow on it so we could see the tracks of the people who'd also made it this far. There was one set of shoe tracks and one set of dog tracks. We all thought it was very cool to know we were among the very few that actually make the effort to get to the upper lakes.
This wasn't on the trail but it was worth the short detour. The view up here was amazing. The bigger lake below me is the Lower Mohawk Lake.
A little farther on down the trail we rounded the corner and saw this. This is the Upper Mohawk lake. In our mountain scaling, we completely missed it! If we hadn't found the trail on the way down, we never would have seen it. Somehow this lake remained unfrozen. It was so clear and so blue. It was amazing.
L:R Jason (MN), Jace (LA), me (NC), Adam (TN) and Graydon (NY)
It took us somewhere around 6 hours to do that hike (a bit long but we did lose the trail...). Oddly though, even though I was exhausted I still couldn't sleep that night. Stupid altitude.
By the end of my week and a half course. I was ready to go back east. I never would have guessed it...but I actually missed humidity.
If you're like to read about my first climb to the Mohawk Lakes, check out my old blog here: http://stizoutwest.blogspot.com/2010/10/day-5-and-6-hiking-in-rockies.html
I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!
-Liz
