So, here's the rundown- it a solo trip for 4 nights. Elevation was at or near 11,000 feet every day. I went fishing every day, but there aren't many photos of that (super hard to take photos of yourself catching fish). Did lots of hiking around. Had boatloads of fun. Got sorta silly. Got a bit different perspective on life.
I've done other trips like this in the past but this was the best so far. It took place in the Rawah Wilderness in northern Colorado. The captions are written to sorta tell the story of my trip and take you along.
Hope you enjoy!
You can start here, just go to each successive pic to get the whole story or skip through if you want.
Thanks!
ETA: I did this towards the end of August but only finally got it uploaded to my portfolio.
Well I'm envious. Some really stunning scenery to backpack through. I like your pano's. They certainly help to give some perspective.
The first couple times I went up there I only had my 18-200 and knew nothing about doing pano's, and was sorely disappointed with the results. Some were decent, and I could probably improve them now with some reworking, but the scale is really hard to capture up there.
Thanks ErikV for posting the other link, I didn't think to do that myself.
I'm glad everybody has liked it. It really is something else to be so isolated on a solo trip. I didn't even see evidence of another person let alone talk to somebody until the third day.
The other nice thing is that it's a wilderness area, which makes permits much easier than, say Rocky Mountain National Park. Besides, you also don't have ten billion people trying to wrestle you for that shot of a bugling elk.
I took my wife on a canoe camping trip once. We were a long way, plus a portage away from access to our car and civilization. She was terrified that if I got hurt, she wouldn't be able to do the portage back herself. Some sort of small animal came scratching at the bump of her feet against the tent that night and she was mortified, LOL! She made me go out and pee a big circle around the tent! Hahahha! At least that calmed her down a bit.
Looks like an awesome trip! I would love to do something like that soon. It was cool following your trip in pictures... I think my favorite one was mother/baby moose combo drinking by the lake.
Very beautiful photos. I'm jealous. Not only of your adventure but of your ability to stay at 11K feet for more than a day. :)
Ironically, after the first day it's way easier. It wasn't a giant leap for me to begin with though because I live at just shy of 5,000 feet anyway, but the second day was WAY easier.
Strikeslip, that story is absolutely hilarious!
FYI I've since shaved, but the winter season is coming and the beard is much more comfortable for snowshoeing and climbs so it'll be back soon. It does get a bit out of control after that many days though, so the grizzly moniker is fitting. :)
looks like it was a great trip!! how was the fishing?
It was exceptional at some lakes, slow at others. The cutthroats were already pretty far into spawn in some areas, and were way more concerned with fish sex than eating, so those lakes were sorta hit or miss. Having said that though, I did see a guy who's 5 year old son caught a 23 inch fish (by sheer luck really), and I saw the fish in the pan so it wasn't a fisherman's tale. The largest I got the whole trip was around 17. Most of the fish just weren't interested in hitting anything. The brookies were going insane though, and there were some mackinaw that were hitting too. In the past, the largest I've caught was around 19-20 inches long.
One thing that was cool was that with the water being crystal clear (20-25 ft visibility in the water), you could observe the big balls of fish swimming around doing their spawn thing, and building nests and all of that. It was something I hadn't ever seen before, so that was neat.
