Hi Mike,
My old buddy Joe, a long-standing member of the Fogies Five (and an even longer-standing member of the “B.A.D.” club when we were CU grad students), and I went on a hike up to the alpine meadows of the Crater Lakes cirque, 30 miles west of Boulder. Along with us came Wayne, Joe’s postdoc. Wayne is from the Phoenix/Tucson inferno, and hasn’t had much of a chance to cruise the high country. The hike up to Crater Lakes exceeded all of our expectations. After 3 miles of steep hiking through the woods, we reached timberline, and found one of Colorado’s finest alpine meadows. We lolled around among the flowers, and would still be up there (I’m writing after dark), were it not that threatening thunderclouds and lightning drove us out and down the trail. We hiked on home wards through a refreshing hailstorm and found Boulder wrapped in clouds, teeming with rain. Wayne carried back a rapidly melting chunk of a snowfield from the cirque, so he can show it (re-frozen) to his Arizona family, many of whom have never (!) seen snow.
Another great day in the Rockies!
Ed