Colorado Backcountry Hiker

"Day 3. Hike Henderson Park, Skinner Hut"
-- from The World Outdoors' hike description

"As you wake up and breathe deeply the fresh mountain air, get ready for another day of
the unique mountain beauty only Colorado can provide."
-- from The World Outdoors' hike description
Today turned out to be the best day of walking. There was a lot of steep up and down, but a lot of not climbing at all in-between, and the ascent/descent in those cases was gradual and easy. Or maybe I was just getting used to things. The ground covered was 7.5 miles, with 1200' elevation gain and 1400' loss, plus a long van ride over extremely rough,
rocky road. Anyway, today we set out knowing there would be some wet walking.
I'd been wearing some amazing Kayland Vertigo High boots I'd bought just for the trip the past two days, but today I decided to see if these Salomon amphibious mesh shoes might work. I'd worn the Salomons on my previous hiking trips and they'd done fine, but the idea of the Rockies had intimidated me into buying serious boots. The Kaylands are great but got a bit heavy and confining after several hours on trail, and wouldn't be as useful if wet was involved. So I switched, and felt reborn. Maybe that's why this day of hiking was so much better!
There was much walking across wide pastures and meadows, surrounded by thick patches of trees and more welcoming groves of aspens.

The trail got a little spookier, though -- Rebecca swore she spotted a cougar track, and then we
started coming across these:

To be fair, it was noted that ranchers let their cattle graze around here and then round them up later, invariably losing a few along the way to natural deaths -- and some unnatural ones -- but these bones are quite picked clean and it's hard to tell if they're cattle or not.
At least, for me it is.
But then, the trail petered out. Eric and Mark just couldn't find it. That happens, fair enough -- trees fall, marshes spring up, and okay. We did a little bushwacking and backing up until we found the trail again, fording a stream here and there where necessary. Lunch was an awkward setup with little shelter from the sun and a lot of bugs. They called it a "Mediterranean" setup, but since none of us had blankets and the ground was questionable we had a hard time really enjoying it. Shortly after lunch, Mark turned back to get the van to meet up with us at a later trailhead, and Angela went with him -- the bruising she took on her leg the previous day was making walking harder, so it made sense. After lunch, the rest of us went on a very steep, very long climb on the "Last Chance Trail."
And finally came to Henderson Park.

"Today we venture deep into Holy Cross Wilderness and explore secluded meadows and flower-filled aspen woodlands on our way to magnificent Henderson Park, a gorgeous example of a pristine alpine meadow filled with flowers and a magnet for wildlife. One can not help but wonder how the first pioneers must have felt when they first saw these beautiful mountains and lakes. "
-- from The World Outdoors' hike description

Yeah, so it's a big empty place. But it just pops up out of the middle of the trees and feels completely Edenic. Marshier than I expected -- that smooth flat plain of grass is veined through with slight streams and soft areas -- but this is an image I've had in my head for years. The photos, as I've said before, just can't do it justice. I was deeply upset that we hadn't had lunch here, because I wanted to spend a good hour just enjoying the place, rather than walking through it. But already the day was turning from sun to that threatening gray and we wanted to make sure we weren't caught in too much rain if we could avoid it. So we cut past the park without really getting into it, and lost the trail again. Nancy volunteered to help Eric scout it out, and the rest of us took a load off sitting just inside the treeline on fallen logs. Again, I'm all cool with the fact that trails peter out. I'm less cool with guides who take as much as 20 minutes to find them again.
Eventually, of course, we found it again.

Note: This is a typical portion of the trail. Once again: The Rocky Mountains are justly named. Stones, boulders, split rock, chips, walls of granite shoot up everywhere, bubbling to the surface like lava. That's what made Henderson such an ease on the eye, it was different, as well as pristine and beautiful. It was also the once place I wished we'd had quiet, but there was much jabbering going on -- turns out that's actually a good thing, because you really don't want to startle any wildlife.
The last part of the day involved a long hike through a massive Aspen segment. What's interesting about the Aspens is they crowd out nearly all other trees in the area, but early on you'll see some mingling:

To me, it looks like the spruce is hugging the aspen.
Here begins the grove:

I failed to take any real pictures inside the grove, it seems, but as we descended and were surrounded by them, their leaves flapping in the breeze like hands waving, I noted how some folks had carved into the tall white trunks over the years. And yes, that's not good for trees, so a rap on the knuckles and don't do it again. But since the markings were there, what was astounding is that amongst the initials and pithy statements were the years: 1953, 1966. And the trunks where the markings showed up weren't all that high up, either, maybe eye level or chest level. It was a trip back in time, and slightly spooky to think about walking where so many others had. Also, reassuring: Fifty-odd years ago people weren't any more thoughtful about leaving the trees alone than we are today.
So, we reached trailhead and the van with Eric and Angela, and exited Holy Cross Wilderness for the day.

We boarded the trusty steed:

Nobody called it "Burt." Here we stop on the ride to our next home, Skinner Hut.
We're just outside the Continental Divide, a seemingly arbitrary marker that indicates the direction water runs -- on one side, to the Pacific, on the other to the Atlantic. Me, I always picture the John Belushi film.

I had shoes off in the van. I rather like the idea that it looks like I hiked here shoeless. As we rounded the corner from this sign we looked back at the snowbank and wondered if anyone ever came out here to snowboard.
The ride in the van took about two hours to go a relatively short distance; the music inflicted on us by the louder of our group was the completely mediocre Jack Jones (the day before had been Ben Harper). I managed to slip in some Miles Davis for about 15 minutes, which was a relief. Fratboy rock tends to be annoying after a song or two, or bland as hell. It's interesting to see what others think of as quality.
Just before we arrived we passed by Turquoise Lake; how it got its name we'll never know, since the guides had no clue (actually, the link does explain). They did know to stop in a certain place to get this shot, but that's it.

"This afternoon, we find ourselves at our next tranquil hideaway -- Skinner Hut, probably the most precipitous site of any hut in Colorado. Blending well with the high, alpine landscape, this handsome stone building appears to have been carved from the underlying crags."

-- from The World Outdoors' hike description

The view from that exterior porch, off to the side:

One of our local visitors, the ground squirrel with the markings of a chipmunk:

And some of the interior sleeping locations. The Sisterhood shared these three bunks side by side.

Dinner: Fajitas with fish, appetizers with turkey until someone "realized" that not all of us ate that kind of meat.
And, more s'mores!