Monday, August 29, 2011

Trey's Visit

Trey spent five days in Colorado before he had to fly back to Kentucky. We packed a lot into those five days. The first day we spent mostly unpacking the Jeep and cleaning the cabin up from the month of neglect while I was gone. The grass was over knee high. I was only able to mow a quarter of the lawn before the motor on the old electric mower burned up.

After working on the yard Wednesday morning, we went on a short hike to an abandoned mine and explored it. We were both pretty sore and winded after the short hike at altitude, which concerned us about our plans for Friday: climbing a 14er. We'd both just come up from sea level, so the altitude was really affecting us.

We went on another hike Thursday to check out a mine we'd seen from the highway for a while. I'd never been to it, so I didn't know if it was open or not. When we finally got to it, we discovered that the entrance had collapsed, but there was enough of an opening left for us to climb down into it. It turned out to be a very cool mine to explore.

Friday morning we woke up at 5 am to set off with Shannon and one of her friends, Sarah, for Mt. Bierstadt, a 14er above Georgetown on the road to Guanella Pass. We were at the trailhead a little after six and to our disappointment, so were 200 other people. It turns out that we picked the one day of the year that a group hikes Mt. Bierstadt for a fundraiser, putting 200 extra people on the trail. I had hoped that since we were hiking on a weekday, there'd be few other people on the trail. Instead, we looked more like a long line of ants walking on the trail.

Here's the view we had from the parking lot at 6 am.
Bierstadt (1)

We could definitely feel the altitude, but after about three hours of hiking, we made it to the top. We spent about 45 minutes on the peak (along with 100 other people) eating lunch and enjoying the view. We made it back to the parking lot by 12.30 pm and spent the rest of the afternoon napping.
Bierstadt (80)


Trey's flight out of Denver left a six in the afternoon on Sunday. We left early to take the Coors Brewery Tour in Golden. When we got there, we were at the back of a 45 minute to one hour line waiting to get on the shuttles that begin the tour. After standing in line for about 15 minutes, one of the brewery employees walked by asking if there were any groups of two. I shot my hand up and yelled that we were. That got us a ticket straight to shuttle, bypassing about a half hour of the line. That extra half hour gave us plenty of time to enjoy the brewery tour and drink the three free beers they give you at the end, before dropping Trey off at the airport.

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