Pawnee Pass

In early July my mom and I got to go hiking up near Brainard Lake.  Cal generously took a Friday off work to watch the boys and we headed out bright and early.  The plan was to hike up to Pawnee Pass.  It was gorgeous!  I couldn't get enough of it.  (that's apparent in the ridiculous number of pictures...)

This was the view from Brainard when we got up there.  See the moon on the left?

The wildflowers were unbelievable.  I think we hit the peak time for flowers, there were TONS everywhere!!  They were beautiful.

Columbines:  Colorado's state flower.

There were also tons of little cascading streams everywhere.

I'm never good at remembering which mountain is which, but the pointy one on the left is Navajo Peak.  I think.

Lake Isabel

The lighting was so cool here!

Flowers, flowers everywhere!

I love the huge clumps of bluebells.

I kept stopping to take pictures.  My mom was patient because my dad does the same thing.

Looking down on Lake Isabel

Another high little lake in the next valley.

It was about here we started to wonder about the building storm clouds.  It's very common to get rain in the Rocky Mountains in the afternoon.  Usually if you are headed down by 1 or 2 you are okay.  We figured we had time to get to the top of the pass and start down before it hit.

Looking back

Um, do you think that storm is going to come this way??

This is Pawnee Pass, where we were headed.  You can see a few groups on the trail.  We made it a little higher than the top group, then it started to sprinkle.  We kept going, knowing we weren't far from the top, and it was only 11.  It only took a few minutes before it really started coming down and we knew we needed to turn around.  So we packed up the camera in plastic bags, threw our rain jackets on and headed down.  

The clouds moved in quickly and soon we couldn't see the pass.  The rain POURED, and then hailed.  It was just small hail, but it really hurt.  It wasn't just falling, it was coming down hard and felt like you were getting shot with a bb gun.  And it was cold.  The trail turned into a stream.  Then the thunder and lightening started.  It was all around us and close and we were so exposed way above tree line.  So we and all the other surprised people up there booked it down as fast as we could.  It rained hard the whole time.  We were so completely soaked and so cold!!  When we made it back to the car, we had a really hard time undoing our pack buckles and taking our soggy boots off because our hands were numb.  This picture doesn't do the rain justice.  It was really coming down.  I thought I was going to lose my shorts.  They are stretchy and a little big and just soaked up the water and stretched and sagged.  We were quite a site.

Even though we didn't make it all the way to the pass and got stuck in a crazy storm, it was so so fun and so worth it!  It was crazy beautiful and felt so good to get out on a "real" hike.  A part of me will always be in the mountains.