American Basin

I wore sunscreen and sunglasses this time--it was much more fun for that. However, we didn't count on all the snow!







(One of the many unnamed but gorgeous peaks around American Basin.)














Aaron (a friend from Sonlight Camp) and I hiked into American Basin, a watershed up in the mountains southwest of Lake City. We were attempting to summit Handies Peak, one of the five "14-ers" (mountains higher than 14,000 feet elevation, of which there are 54 in Colorado) in the Lake City area. Alas, we didn't make the summit. We should have started earlier: we were about 1,000 feet from the summit at our turn-around time. Sigh.




(The view back down American Basin from about 12,000 feet.)








Our upward progess was made slow by the abundance of snow--much more snow than on the trail to Uncompahgre last week. But the foamy white made the scenery quite beautiful, as you can see in these photos. In one of them, you can see the flat-topped Uncompahgre Peak peeking out with its reddish face from behind a closer mountain.

(See the wide top of Uncompahgre, hazy in the the distance?)









In another, you can see Sloan Lake, a nearly-frozen pond at 12,000 feet, basking below a jagged ridge of unnamed peaks.








(Sloan Lake, almost as white as the snow around it.)






One of these photos looks back on our track down from the base of the peak. What is hard to discern in the photo is the slope. We decided it would be faster to slide down the northwest face of Handies rather than take the circuitous trail back into the basin. We tried to glissade (a first attempt at the skill for me), but the snow was too deep and powdery. So we ran down the 50-degree incline through the two-foot-deep snow. We watched little dislodged chunks of hardened snow go scurrying down the slope ahead of us, followed by a mist of sandy ice kicked up by our knees. It was much faster than taking the trail around!








(I had to crane my neck upwards to get this shot!)












Though we didn't make the summit, it was another beautiful morning in some of the most beautiful scenery in God's world.
~emrys