We’re having a bit of Indian Summer and I was eager to get out in the high country once more before cold, snow and hunters preclude the possibilities. Stanna was off in Utah hiking with her Wednesday “ladies hiking” group for a couple days, so it was a prefect time to do a solo hike and knock off a couple more Audible books. With Durango daytime temps slated to be in the mid 70’s and clear skies, I figured it would be wonderful in the San Juans as well, which it was.
In fact, I wanted to title this blog post a “Durango Calendar Day”, but realized that many may not know of the archaic expression “Swiss Calendar Day”. Like Switzerland when we have clear days it’s worth featuring on a calendar, like the vintage Swiss Air calendars of the 50’s. We’ve quite a bit of snow and wet weather, as noted in the news, so the trail was snow covered in the shady spots and muddy in the low parts, but outside that trail the views with early snow covered peaks was fantastic.

Crater Lake, where I camped was snow covered in just about everything excluding the sunny side of the lake (photo above). At about 11,800′ I had to find a clear spot in the trees to stay off the snow and out of the boggy grass. The best part was that no one was at this popular destination at the foot of Snowden mountain and I had the entire area to myself. I arrived in late afternoon and had plenty of time to finish my book, lounging on my Neolite pad against a tree as the sun slid down the western ridge line of Snowden.

As it was only 6 miles back to the trail head, I spent several hours in the morning reading the latest New Yorker on my iPad before I ventured back along the trail to Andrews Lake where I started. In case you’re wondering what I’m reading, I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (excellent), finished Freedom by Daniel Suarez (my fiction for the month), and started The Tipping Point by Gladwell as well.