Miles Travelled: Too tired to go back to the car to look
Current Location: Montrose, CO
When we woke up this morning is was snowing again, not sticking but it was miserable enough to put the final dagger in the rafting plans. We hate to miss the rafting opportunity but on the positive side the guy gave us a full refund so the trip coffers are replenished a bit.
I am not sure what the best word or words are to describe the terrible drive we made through Kansas but whatever they are, I would use the opposite words to describe driving through Colorado. We put in a couple of hours this morning with one view after another like this one.
The bad luck from Canon City was quickly erased when we got back on the road. A few hours into the trip we stopped for gas at this country store.
The store was run by an older couple that had fishing and mountain climbing pictures all over the store. One photo at the counter was particularly impressive and the lady saw me admiring it. She told me that the picture was of her son climbing Painted Wall in Black Canyon. Her son and three others spent 8 days on the wall. On the last day the ran out of food and water but still made it to the top (the picture was also supported by a newspaper article). I was blown away and asked where Black Canyon was and she told us it was a National Park right down the road. We decided to check it out. Here is a picture of Painted Wall which is more than 2,000 feet high.
Just seeing that would have made the trip worth it but there were 11 different observation posts with all kinds of different views. Here is one of the river that runs through the canyon.
We also did some great hiking along the finished trails and also through some unfinished ones that required some moderate rock climbing. We took the most adventurous route at each fork which led to some fantastic photos.
We saw a lot of animals, especially various types of birds, and we came across our best wildlife encounter yet which LD captured masterfully with this picture.
There was also a lot of interesting and unique (at least to anyone from the east) plant life.
And yes that is snow in the deer and flower pictures. By far the most amazing part of Black Canyon is the speed at which the weather changes. When we arrived it was 35 degrees and windy. A half hour into our first hike it was in the 50's and we were sweating like crazy. Shortly after that it started raining but then got sunny again. As we drove to the next observation post Laura pointed out a huge mass of clouds and said "I am pretty sure that is headed right towards us." It was and when we were at the next post we were caught in a terrible hail storm with driving winds. We pushed on to High Point (elevation 8,841 feet) and either the weather passed or we got above it because when we got to the peak it was sunny and warm and we had a beautiful view of the valley below. Of course, no weather collection would be complete without snow so on our way out of the park we stopped to take this picture.
An inch or two of snow accumulated in about 20 minutes. At the park we did about 6 or 7 miles of hiking so we were beat. We left the park and got a hotel in the nearest town and ordered some takeout food. We have a few open days so we are not sure where we are headed before Arches National Park.
Click here for the full Black Canyon photo album
