Summer 2003
For our first major hike, we went to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, which is an amazing place. 50 or so miles from the nearest mountains, the Gunnison River carves through a very large hill made of metamorphic rock. To get there, you drive for a long ways on an area of rolling hills, then you drive 15 or so miles uphill to get to the canyon. You can't see it until you're right on top of it, and just out in the middle of nowhere is a caynon that's 1100 feet across and 1700 feet deep. To give you a sense of scale, the water you see at the bottom is a raging river, and we could just barely hear the roar of the many waterfalls.
The cliffside behind Nancy here is called "The Painted Wall" for obvious reasons.
For our second big hike, we went up behind Crested Butte past Gothic to the Maroon Bells/Snomass Wilderness Area. It was July 6th, but Schofield Pass was still snowed over, so we parked at about 10,000 feet above sea level and walked over the pass into Schofield Park. From there, we followed the East Fork of the Crystal River towards Frigid Air Pass. This is a picture of Nancy resting after we've climbed from Schofield Park at 10400 feet up to 12000 feet.
We turned west from Frigid Air Pass and went to an unnamed 12100 foot pass to look over into Halsey Basin. The big mountains straight ahead are Snomass Mounain, Hagerman Peak, and Snomass Peak. (We're looking at them from the south, but most people see them from the north, which is where Vail is.)
Just over the pass, we saw a Ptarmigan.
Having spent a good 6 hours above 11000 feet, we were getting pretty tired and sunburned. This is Nancy just before we descended back down to Schofield park, which is the very bottom of the valley you can't quite see below.