More Scenes from Mt. Columbia, Colorado

As it turns out, Mt. Columbia will remain my only 14er--at least for the foreseeable future.  Though my time here in Colorado has been spectacular, I've met fewer goals here than I'd anticipated.  It was always meant to be a writing retreat more than a hiking retreat, and now it draws to a close.  Here are the rest of the photos I took from the top of Mt. Columbia and a few from below.

Here is Mt. Columbia from afar--from the Collegiate Peaks Overlook in the San Isabel National Forest.  Mt. Harvard and Mt. Yale do indeed cut finer forms, it's true.  Still, it's a hell of a mountain.

The wildflowers on the mountainsides were so delicate and fragrant beneath the summer sun.

There are alpine biomes up there that change rapidly as you ascend and descend.  

I think these are the little plants that smelled so strongly like cannabis.

I believe this is the shoulder--or "the traverse"--that connects Mt. Harvard with Mt. Columbia, making it possible and appealing to most peakbaggers to collect both mountaintops in one long trek.

Click on this photo to enlarge it.  Here you see Amy & Austin--which is the young couple with whom I shared much of the ascent--as well as another fellow who approached on "the traverse" from Mt. Harvard and claimed both peaks in one long hike.  The friend he was traveling with is not visible in this photo, but the mountaintop marmot is!  See him and all the others gazing down at my slow ascent.

I like the way the trail in the foreground of this photo runs along the edge of a nasty drop.  This is the long descent, which took me far longer than it took all my young fellow climbers.  As I recovered from this descent, I told myself, "No more 14ers!"  The very next day, I was busy researching 14ers I could do with my somewhat unadventurous teenage daughters.  I even preemptively purchased postcards of Mt. Sherman, Huron Peak, and Mt. Belford--thinking I'd do the first with my kids and the other two by myself.  But alas.  Now I've got some expensive postcards of mountains I've never laid eye or foot on.  Where does the time go?

Lower down on the mountainside, the trail runs like this through vast fields of stones.  See how the same trail that appears in the foreground also snakes along the shaded mountainside in the center of the photo?  Such a joy it's been to explore a bit of these mountains.