After a big day of driving, I decided I should wear out my feet a bit. Continuing my diagonal trek across Colorado, I found a hike along a crest atop Grand Mesa. The mesa is the largest flat-topped mountain in the world with an area of about 500 square miles, with an elevation of about 11,000 feet. The road over it, State Highway 65, is a scenic byway. Crag Crest trail caught my eye.
The Crag Crest rises from 10,150 feet at Eggleston Lake to 11,189 feet along the crest. At the lower elevations, the trail passes through stands of Englemann spruce, subalpine fir and open meadows. Quaking aspen, with leaves which are light green in the summer and brilliant yellow in the fall, grows among the dark green conifers. […] To the northwest, the Book and Roan Cliffs appear as multicolored cliffs and slopes. The highest point on the Grand Mesa is Leon Peak, [visible to] the east. This 11,326-foot peak was once used as a fire lookout.
US Forestry Service
I decided to do the loop “backwards” — if there is such a standard — because I thought saving the ridge for last would be 1) great, and 2) a good motivator to make it up the incline to the ridge which seems to happen all at once. That worked well.
And on the way back down, fellow Zelda Breath of the Wild enthusiasts will recognize an obvious korok seed:
On the way back down into my overnight in Rifle, CO, I there was a fairly abrupt change from what I recognize as Colorado mountains to the plateaus and rocky canyons that I’ve long associated with the deserts of the southwest.
This took me east on I-70 just a bit, to discover that it is closed for the second time this week because of another massive mudslide in Glenwood Springs. The fire last summer — which is why I didn’t venture to Colorado on the Coronaroadtrip — stripped the landscape of all the retaining greenery that keeps the mountains off of the roadway. Thankfully I was able to stop short of that, and had booked my motel room before the slide sent the rest of the world to Rifle, too.
Never seen a deer run up a cliff face like that before.