Mt. Audubon

My dad and I went to the Brainard Lake Recreation Area on Saturday, and despite an exceptionally late start, made it more than half the way up Mt. Audubon in the Indian Peaks Wilderness area.  It was beautiful, and we had the trail all to ourselves.  The lateness of the day and rainy weather earlier in the day had probably driven everyone off of the mountian.  The amount of snow on the trail was exceptional.  Drifts taller than me still covered much of the trail, even at the lower elevations.  Actually, that's where most of it was -- it had already melted off of the exposed tundra farther up, but remained in the shade of the forest lower down.  I can look west any time and see that there's still snow on the mountians, but... it was still shocking to see such quantities of it in the middle of June! 

We got a few small drops of rain, but the weather mostly held for us and it wasn't until we were well up on the tundra that I had to don a thin sweatshirt, which kept me warm the rest of the trip.  Unfortunately, we knew the light wouldn't hold out, and had to turn around at 7:00.  This is as high up the mountain as we got, looking up and looking down:

I think this is a limber pine.  These trees were beautiful, with their smooth bark, tufts of needles, and cones all clustered at the top, and they provided a nice contrast with the sub alpine fir and Engleman spruce.