Reflecting back on last night coming down the mountain, the trees were welcoming us with open branches. They invoked a sense of calm and serenity after the harshness of the mountain peaks we had climbed. And yet those same mountains were breathtakingly spectacular.
We climbed back up into them on a forest service road that used to be a railroad. Rollins pass at the top was the site of a restaurant and lodge back in the early 1900s. It's long been abandoned but we could see remnants of the foundation. It was a beautiful morning for hiking and we enjoyed our last bit of above tree line views and then it was a long descent down. And down, and down. It was flat to gently rolling trail through meadows, marshes and forest and then down some more.
We came out at Monarch Lake and stopped at a campground to cook dinner before hiking further.
Hikeaholic was ahead of us down the trail and he called me (yes called) and reported the blow downs were just as bad or worse then reported by others. However, he saw a lot of moose. So we elected to walk around Arapahoe lake on the opposite side of the trail along the road. We had walked 30 miles and it was getting dark. Our plan was to camp in the trees somewhere out of sight. A car passed us and then turned around and came back. She said "it gets dark here a lot quicker than you think. Can I give you a ride somewhere. Well, by this time we'd walked most of the dirt road portion so we accepted. We asked to be dropped at a campground ahead but she asked if we wanted a shower and invited us to spend the night at her cabin nearby.
I'm so glad we did. This lady was in her 70s and had traveled all over the work. She understood intuitively what we needed and what we were doing. She was amazing and fun to talk too. We stayed up late sitting on her deck talking and looking up at the stars.
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