The Traveler at Home: Spruce Hole Yurt

There are places in the world that you know you will eventually return to. You don't know when, but you do know that it will be a much better experience the second time around.

The Spruce Hole Yurt was just such a place. About six years ago, I went there with three other women, and we came very close to spending the night in a blizzard and potentially dying.

We spent a Friday night at the yurt after an easy run over thick cold snow. The next day we packed up lunch and water, a few necessary things like chap stick and toilet paper, and headed out for a three hour tour. Just like Gilligan's Island......

After an hour slogging through 8 foot snow drifts between trees to get to the top of a ridge, we skied down into a giant white bowl of snow, the Spruce Hole. Two of the women had been here before and so we headed up another ridge to find the road that would lead back to the yurt. We had no map. When they'd been there before, there was less snow, and the road was visible. This time it was not. By 2:00, we'd found no trace of a road, no fence line (buried), no road signs (buried!), and the sun would be setting at 5:30 with almost pitch darkness by 6:00. Time to back track.

The weather gods were not our friends that day. A storm had been moving in slowly and by late afternoon it was gloomy and starting to snow. The wind had picked up and obliterated our tracks at the top of the first ridge, making entry back into the forest over our original path almost impossible. We had no map, no headlamps or flashlight, no matches to start a fire, no emergency space blankets, no chemical hand warmers, no shovel to dig a snow cave. We had no way to survive the night.

Darker and darker with failing light and thickening clouds we worked our way into the woods till we came across a road and followed some ski tracks we hoped were ours. I had never been out hiking in the woods for more than a few hours at a time, certainly had never skied for that long, and now over 8 hours had passed since we left the yurt. I was on the verge of total exhaustion. In the gloom, off to the left, I spotted the yurt and almost cried. We were saved.

Inside, the fire in the stove was dead. We clomped in, took off our boots and descended on the chocolate bars.

Ah, but yesterday.....it was a very different story.

The Spruce Hole yurt, nestled in the forest.

Momo, one of the organizers in the Mountaineer's Club wanted to do a snowshoe/ski trip into a yurt, so last fall he picked a weekend in the spring. The weather was nice, a bit windy, but not bad once we got into the trees. It had snowed a day or two before so there was about 4 inches of new snow, wet and heavy, but enough to cover the bare spots that had developed during the prior weeks.

The snowshoers had no problems, but for Jim and me, the snow was sticky and slow in the sunny places, slick as glass where it had melted and refrozen in the tree shadows. I only fell, a major face plant, once, on the way in. I was pleased, because I hadn't been on skis in three years and wondered how I'd manage the balancing act of slick skis with a heavy backpack.

We made it to the yurt in two hours. Dave was a consummate fire starter and had the yurt warmed up quickly. Everyone unpacked and took a nap. Momo loves drama, so they all planned to hike up the hill behind the yurt to a viewpoint to see the mountains in the sunset. I bagged that and went for a walk instead. The snow was only a few inches deep, except under trees where I had to swim through on my knees with ski poles in each hand, laid out flat on the snow for support.

Sunset shot

Each of us brought our own food and had some nice dinners, played Hearts till midnight and finally went to sleep with the stove packed with logs for the night. The yurt has an interesting feature, a plastic dome on the top for light. In the very center is a tree, held in place by guy-wires and the poles that also hold up the roof. You can climb the tree and sit in a swivel chair perched up there with your head sticking up in the dome. The 360 degree view is nice and the dome pops open slightly to let in fresh air.

The next day, the two snowshoers hiked up over the hills we'd skied around to meet us back at the truck. Jim and I attempted to ski out. The man was a saint because I fell about every ten minutes, and took ten more minutes to get up with the heavy pack. He could ski ahead and fish-bone his way up some of the hillsides for a short run down while waiting for me to catch up. About a quarter mile from the truck, I fell and couldn't get back together. My hip just didn't want to flex in the way I needed it to. It took way more than ten minutes, and the last time I stood up, one ski slid fast downhill and back down I went. So I bagged it. Jim carried the skis for me and I hiked the rest of the way.

Still, sore and bruised was better than potentially frozen to death. Both trips were great, but so much better the second time around.

Patient Jim on his tele-skis

Dave, cameraman and fire starter

The necessary.....

Site of the last fall. Who'd have thought I couldnt' ski this?
A baby could ski this!!

Colorado in the Fall

My mother and I spent the last week of September in Boulder, Colorado, house sitting for friends and taking care of their darling schnauzer, Cloe. It was the height of the turning aspens, reddening oaks, and ripening golden grasses. We had unusually warm weather, between 75 and 95 degrees F almost every day. The air was still, the aspens barely quaked, and of course held onto their leaves for everyone to enjoy.

Reflections and underwater grasses

On Monday we headed up to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. I think it's been about 15 or 20 years since I last visited Bear Lake and saw the Keyboard of the Winds formation. It has been one of my favorites since I drew a coloring book for the park back in the 70's. These days, they have an in-park Park-N-Ride. We left the van and took a nice big-windowed bus up the road to the lake. What a nice addition that is! I got to look around and see the scenery instead of being entirely focused on NOT driving off the road. They delivered us right to the trail head and we hopped off for the mile long walk around the lake. My mother, at 80, easily made the hike. She's in great shape but she has trouble with depth perception. The aspen were at their peak and since it was a week day there were no heavy crowds.

Bear Lake is pristine water with an occasional jumping trout. It was mostly still and reflective of the building cumulus clouds.

Bear Lake

There is a highway, a broad, sometimes three and four lane road, from Estes Park to Nederland, called the Peak to Peak Highway. It is one of the most spectacular drives in the country any time of year, but especially in late September. Once in a while an early snowstorm will just blanket the "fourteeners" and leave the aspen untouched making for spectacular photos. But this year we settled for a lovely drive.

Scene along the Peak to Peak Highway.

Aspen around Bear Lake

My friend Claudia came to Boulder on Wednesday. We went on a longer hike north and west of Nederland in a large open space that used to be a ranch. At one time the ranch was owned by Graham Nash, of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. He'd built a lovely "old" barn that actually housed a first class recording studio. There is a farmhouse on the property, down in an open valley, which has been featured in numerous movies.

The Ranch

Lone Aspen

On Friday morning, I got up well before dawn, donned my warmest clothes, stopped at McDonald's for some coffee and headed to Chautauqua Park in Boulder to take photos of the Flatirons illuminated by the rising sun. It was cool and the parking lot filled rapidly with cars of early morning joggers and young men with climbing gear. The Flatirons are hugely popular among rock climbers. After a bit of tromping through the stiff grasses and rocks, I found a perfect place to take some  photos of the formation. There were high clouds in the east that filtered the normally bright pink light, but the rocks showed well.  Outside of the Tetons, the Flatirons of Boulder must surely be the most photographed rock formation in the country. The light kept changing as shadows from trees retreated and the sky got bluer. By 8:00 the trails were crowded with people and the light began to flatten. A lovely morning spent in a lovely town. I do love Boulder. It would be nice to move back, but it would be too much like life-reversal. I lived there for 17 years. The future is elsewhere. 

Earliest morning light on the Flatirons

Late morning shot

Pretty asters in the
morning light.

Denver Botanical Gardens

Thursday, Sept 29th, my mother and I went to the Denver Botanical Gardens. The few days before had been hot, but Thursday was predicted to be cooler, and blessedly, it was. 

I know we had been to the gardens once before, when I was in high school, but Mom didn't remember ever seeing them. And of course, nothing is the same 40 years later anyway!

The facility boasts a large glass covered tropical garden, Monet Lily Pond, Japanese garden, many sculptures (currently about 20 by New Mexican artist Allen Hauser), a lovely annuals alley,  memorial garden and a scripture garden which had symbols (if not actual scriptures) from most of the world's major religions.

A single lily in bloom.

Miraculously (maybe on purpose?) the Monet Lily Pond featured evenly spaced water lilies, each with a single bloom.  The tea house, in the Japanese garden, was not open for business, but the garden and water features were well designed with small gravel pathways through neatly trimmed forests. 

We met a woman from Saudi Arabia who was very friendly and loved the opportunity to practice her English and exchange stories. She was fascinated by my freckled skin, and my mother's much lighter tone. So Mom told her a story about how Allah had created people, but when he was cooking them the first time, he didn't cook them long enough, hence there are Americans (pale). Then he cooked the next batch too long and they became the Africans. The third batch were just the right color, so they are the Arabs. The lady was delighted and kissed my mother on each cheek, much to Mom's surprise. (I know that old fable, the Mexicans tell it often to explain why they are perfect in God's eyes. But stories should be altered to suit the moment!) 

The Botanical gardens are a perfect place to spend many hours enjoying the sunshine, soft breezes, the wonderful aromatic scents that waft past, and perhaps to learn the names of some plants. The plant identification documentation was quite good, there are plenty of places to sit, art to admire, and all under that deep blue Colorado sky with drifting white clouds. 

We ate a nice lunch in the cafe. Unlike many similar attractions, the park food was tasty and not outrageously expensive. There were many entrees, all of them pre-prepared like sandwiches and baked potatoes. The salads were fresh and light, and they carried a good selection of bottled drinks to chose from. Not gourmet fare, but certainly healthy and quick. 

A delightful day. We spent about six hours there, and didn't see everything. I read later in the brochure that we'd missed the labyrinth in a corn field. I'm not sure where the corn field was, we must have walked right past it and not realized it was anything special. 

Hauser Sculpture of three women.

Japanese garden with misting fountain

Inside the tropical dome

Ducks in the tropical "river"