jpgray's epic CO vacation in photos (many images, 56k people) [View All]

My dad, bro and myself went on a 41.4 mile, five-day backpacking trip, and, lucky you, you get to see some of the pictures.

1
Me at the first camp:


2
A break on day 2:


Elk herd of cows on day 2, with a rebelliously disinterested youth:


A break on day 3, with me smiling because no one asked me to take off the sun specs and squint into the camera:


My brother in the same pose:


Our pappy removes his sunglasses for no man:


Even halfway into the trip the salt stains on this shirt have progressed so far that solid pink has given way to a virtual tie-dye:


The flowers were really gorgeous on this loop--one of my brother's better shots:


We played leapfrog (now this is going to sound derogatory) with a French group a few times heading towards Squaw Pass. They were great fun, and they had cheese(!) and carrots(!!). I learned the French pronunciation for "knickers" at this point:


An elk hoof at our third camp:


Day 4 was altogether nasty but exciting. After a pleasant few miles on the trail, a whole chain of awesome storm clouds forced us to cower in fear under a tarp until the lightning relented enough for us to get over our last ridge and into the trees of the North Fork. We were hailed on three times and had lightning strike all around us, making our hair stand on end and our gear hum ominously. After we had made a frenzied crossing of a ridge during a break in the clouds, we came upon a massive snowslide in the North Fork Canyon as the downpour continued. It had obliterated the trail, so we had to improvise:




The next day I was fairly sleepy:



This looked much less graceful in life:


Triumphant at the car:


For you boot fetishists:


Call it altitude sickness or psychologically revealing, but I had an overpowering urge to steal this sign:


In the sprawling metropolis of Lake City, we frightened the locals, polluted their coffee shop and ate all their food. The coffee was good: