This was a day I had been very much looking forward to. Finally we were in the mountains of Colorado. There is a reason Colorado is known for it’s mountains despite the range covering many others states and we were about to experience it to the fullest. We met up with Scott (‘Sky’ on the forums) who would be our local guide for the day. Scott was, despite his modesty, a master photog and taught us many things over the radio throughout the day. Plus, it was pretty cool to see his 150-pound, 100,000-megapixel camera with a 57-foot lens… slight exaggeration, maybe.. but still very cool.

Also, Scott is without question the only person in the world to have a white All Pro roof rack!

Nothing can convey how big everything is up in these mountains. It’s just… big. Spot the FJ!

The amount of snow on the ground was a bit surprising as the weather was far from freezing. The location was also odd; some snow was on the ‘dark’ faces of mountains where you’d expect but often there were huge fields of snow sitting exposed in the sunlight. It was very strange but interesting and enjoyable. What was NOT enjoyable, however, was when we came around a corner and spotted the trail ahead, blocked severely by snow.

We would have to improvise a route. Luckily, between us we had just about every piece of nav software, diverse mapsets for the computer, stand-alone GPS units, and different paper maps! While the others played cartographer, I played photographer. I seem to enjoy these ‘hood in the middle of everything’ shots…

I think at this point I could be found yelling something like “GOATS!! GOOOAATTS!!!!”

One of the goats was not bashful at all, and walked right up near our group…

Not wanting to be rude, I walked up to meet him and introduce myself. Everything was going very well and it appeared we’d make great friends until I tripped and almost fell on him shortly after this picture was taken. I guess this was sort of scary for him, as he fled with amazing goat speed.

Despite our tools and efforts, finding an alternate way off the mountains was proving to be very difficult! Soon night was falling and we were still in the same area as we’d been all day.

It became clear we would not get to where we wanted to be before dark…

We were trying to find a way out that was not the way we came in. Of course that would work, but it was hours behind us and would result in the day covering effectively zero miles forward. Lance was on a solo mission checking out a possible way out when he came on the radio confident that he’d found it. We followed and it turned out to be one of the highlights of the day. After a few steep descents and switchbacks, we were literally driving in a flowing stream! It was marked as a trail both on the map and with signs here and there. Very cool!

Driving down it was eerie. It was pitch black in the forest and we were deep in a kind of half-pipe filled with water. Nathan and I joked that we would soon be attacked by BigFoot or worse…