Things to Do in Denver When You're Not Dead

At this point, I've been in Denver for about 6 weeks now.  I'm absolutely loving it here.  The weather is great, the atmosphere is fantastic, and the people are awesome.

I am socializing a decent amount.  Trying to make plans with people and hitting up happy hour here and there.  The problem is that that leads to drinking most nights of the week.  I'm trying to get away from that a bit and trying to focus on being healthier in general.  I just have to find a balance.  I'm also spending A LOT of time on my house.  As with most home improvement projects, it costs twice as much and takes 3 times as long to complete.  I am making progress though.  The majority of my house has been painted and a lot of furniture is getting delivered in the next week and a half.  At that point, my living room furniture will consist of more than a folding camp chair.

I do need to get out in Denver and explore a bit more.  My athletic ambitions have been meh at best.  A few runs and a bike ride and that's it.  I'll get out more though.  There is a lot of great riding around Colorado.  This should help with the plentiful great beer as well.

No prospects on a job yet, but I'm also not looking either.  I'm networking, but not actively job seeking.  If everything goes to plan, this will be the case until January or February.

But yeah, things are going great right now!

Colorado Backpacking In Indian Peaks

I'm settling in Denver quite nicely, but I'll go into more details about that in another post.

I've been able to take my first trip since Moving to Denver.  I did a lot of backpacking and hiking in college, but sort of lost interest once I moved to Texas.  The reason for this is that I prefer doing these activities when it is cooler and it is almost never cool in Texas.  Even doing some backpacking in March or April can yield some very sweaty days and possibly sweaty nights.  I just don't enjoy that.  Once I got to Denver, some of my friends asked if I wanted to go backpacking and I said yes without hesitating.

I had to gather up my gear that is in the disaster that is known as my house.  I think all of my gear was in 4 different boxes spread across 3 different rooms.  I didn't have time to test out the tent nor water filter, but I would've winged it.  The sleeping bag was in use when I first moved into my house, but the sleeping pad tending to deflate throughout the night.  Sigh, it'll have to do.

We left at around 1:30pm on Friday and got to the trailhead at around 4:30.  We ended up doing the Neva (I want to keep calling it Nuva) backcountry zone at Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.  This was our plan B because the forest rangers said that our plan A was pretty much under snow.  BTW, this was at the end of June and there were plenty of places still under snow.  We got started and hiked the 2 miles to our campsite.

A small stream by the head of the trail.

Waterfall across the valley.

Small break while we let the rain subside.

We had to cross this snow runoff stream.  You were pretty much guaranteed to get your feet wet.

Just a pretty picture.

Denver & Boulder are off in the background over the mountains there.

I can't have a normal smile at all.

See, snow on the trails is many places.

My tent and where I was sleeping.

Our 1st night was pretty fun.  Took us just about 90 minutes to go the 2 miles uphill to the campsite.  We had some trouble finding a good spot to camp though.  Lots of stuff on the ground so not much flat, dry ground.  We all pretty much pitched our tents far away from each other.  Two of the people on the trip were in charge of the group food (breakfast and dinner) and we ate like kings and queens that night.  The food was absolutely amazing!  I can't remember exactly, but the 1st night was some sort of curry ramen with veggies, jalapenos, and chicken.  Then we had a berry crisp for dessert.  The good thing about only hiking 2 miles to base camp is that you don't really mind carrying so much stuff.  I greatly appreciate Andrew for hauling so much of that stuff up to the base camp.

Sunset by a huge steam boiler used for the mine.

No words needed.

I have this weird thing of taking pictures of interesting (to me) rocks.

On Saturday, we had a lazy morning to wake up, eat breakfast, drink coffee, and get rolling.  We didnt' sleep much that night because a huge wind storm came through at about 3am.  Next time I go backpacking, I really need to bring earplugs.  We finally got moving at around 11ish to go on a day hike.  Between the 5 of us, we took 3 packs for food, water, and other stuff.  I really need to bring an ultralight day pack for excursions like this.  Our goal was to hike up the trails to the South & North Arapaho Peaks.  With our basecamp at 10k feet, the summits were at around 13.5k.  That's quite a jaunt up the mountain.

One of my favorite pics from the trip.  Very "The Sound Of Music"-esque.

Above the tree line.

Arapaho Glacier.

Rain in the distance that completely missed us.

A weird tree that I liked.

We got near the top which was around 13k feet.  A couple of people went to the very top to actually summit South Arapaho Peak.  Also, it was extremely windy at the top.  I almost lost my hat because of the wind.  I didn't go because I'm scared of heights and my knee was starting to act up.  This was my 1st hike since knee surgery in October and I didn't want to push it.  The other 3 of us took another trail that really didn't go up anymore.  We did some "bushwhacking", I say that because there were no bushes but just mountain prairies, and we tried to get further up.  Seemed like every time you got to the top of a ridge, there was another ridge just above that one.  We were getting tired so we headed back down the mountain.

The altitude definitely affected me on the way up the mountain.  I adjusted eventually though.  Still took things cautiously because of my knee and the 1st hike up the mountain.  After awhile, I was keeping up with the others that are used to the elevation.  On the way down, I'm actually a slow descender.  I used hiking poles and lower myself down.  And my stupid knee as well.

What a Burmese mountain dog does after summiting South Arapaho Peak.

We got back to the basecamp at around 4pm.  Overall, it was about 5 hours and we estimated that we hiked 6 miles with 3k of elevation gain.  Very rewarding day hike, especially without packs on our backs.  Got back to base camp took naps, and then had a delicious gourmet dinner again.  And then we had dessert.  We did the normal campground stuff of trading stories, acting ridiculous, and eating dirt.  It was a great night.

View from our campsite.

Small stream by our campsite.  We got water here and it is very cold.  I could keep my hands in the water only for a few seconds.

Daytime moon on the morning of the last day.

Colorado sun at elevation is no joke.  Next time, all exposed skin will be getting sunscreen, including the back of my ears.

This was my 2nd backpacking trip in about a decade and I still love it.  I really need to go more often and I think I will now that I'm in such great backpacking country.  Look at how gorgeous some of these views were.  I'm used to the north Georgia mountains which are beautiful, but these are absolutely insane.  I cannot wait to get back in the mountains.  I learned a lot from this trip and I'll be making some adjustments, but I can't wait to sleep in the woods again.