I Like What I Did Today

Bridge 1/many

It didn't start out as anything special. Just reacquainting myself with a hiking trail I hadn't seen in five years. But the day felt good. I loved the way the sweat trickled down my back. I loved placing my feet on the rocky trail. I greeted like an old friend the ache in my quads. Three Mile Creek Trail starts vertical and goes up from there. Straight up alongside its namesake creek with a bridge density on the order of four per mile.

Sweat was indeed trickling

While eating lunch (i.e. the emergency can of soup from my car because guess whose delicious quiche lunch was in a refrigerator in Denver), I looked at the map and realized that a through-hike would be doable. I could connect to two other trails -- Rosalie and Abyss respectively, winding between two mountains and getting glimpses of my 14er friend Mt. Evans. The Abyss would dump me four miles from my car, and since there was a hiker behind every rock and tree on this gorgeous Saturday, I figured someone could be persuaded to translate me through those road miles by car.

Velvet revealed

It worked like a charm. I recognized that I was on top of the velvety looking hillsides I'd seen the numerous times I'd hiked Abyss. I swore I'd get back there and bushwhack to check out all that suavity. Turns out there's a trail goes right through the "velvet." Also turns out it's not that velvety. More like a mix of soft grass punctuated & poked through by short, but symmetrical and evenly-spaced scrub oak. Tricky buggers sucker us hikers in every time.

Beaver Ponds

Up on high, traversing a meadow between two 12ers, Kataka and Tahana, I could see the ridge that Sweet Sis and I worked the first time we bagged Beirstadt. I recognized the windy trail where I'd startled a bushy gray coyote and a brilliantly-white snowshoe hare while doing Abyss in April. I looked down on the beaver ponds and willows that bedeviled attempts at getting anywhere in the country. I climbed out of Three Mile Creek's drainage, rounded Kataka Mountain, and dropped into Scott Gomer Creek's drainage. All in a day's work.

Puffy happy

It was short, downhill work to the Abyss TH. Now I had those tricky four road miles between me and my car. I wiped my face on the inside of my shirt and finger-combed my hair, maybe not first date material but convinced I was no longer sporting dirtbag-hiker-style but she'd-be-acceptable-in-our-car-style. With a deep breath of mountain air, I started hiking down the road. I visualized and anticipated that thumb out feeling. I thought maybe I should practice, but just then a car came -- a red sedan with Oregon plates.  My road-facing thumb skyrocketed up just like I'd imagined. And they pulled over! I jogged up to the gaping window and saw four occupants. I explained my situation, emphasizing the scant four miles part of the deal. Ma said they were fully-booked, but daughter in the back was already squeezing over closer to boyfriend and announced that there was room. With that decree, Dad popped the trunk and I stowed my pack and poles.

Meet Scott Gomer; he's
ice bath cold! (Yes, I
would know.)

Today I hiked fourteen miles and got to know another corner of the world. I made four-mile friends with some Tennessee tourists who were a little wide-eyed to be driving through mountain passes on washboard gravel roads while chatting to a grungy hitchhiker who smelled the part but had been to the Grand Ole Opry. I covered a lot of ground, learned a lot of territory. Net sum? I love what I did today.