Carr Peak with Zeke and Sadie

Ellen and I agreed to hike up Carr Peak today after her church service.  Meetup time was 12:30pm in the lower Perimeter parking area.  That late start gave me some time to putz around, although in the end that just meant watching a video online, rather than doing some yard work or cleaning out the van for my upcoming road trip.

Clouds lingered over the mountains all morning.  I worried about hiking in that weather, but by the time Ellen and I met, the winds had calmed down and the dark clouds around the peaks had mostly dissipated.  Ellen therefore inspired me to hike the peak.  We got to the Sawmill trail head at 12:58pm with two exuberant dogs.  To my surprise, I did well today.  Was it the cooler weather, the increase in stair workouts and powerwalks with the dogs?  Even Ellen noted my pace.  I stopped only twice to give the dogs some water, since there was none at the falls higher up.

My hiking app, MapMyHike, kept shutting down during the hike, which made me keep an eye on the phone so I could restart the app.  This somehow messed up with the accuracy of the time and tracking, because it read 1:07 hours for us to get to the top.   The trail is only 2.9 miles one-way. Ellen said her app read 1:30 hours, which seems more reasonable. Last month it took me 1:50 hours to reach the peak.

We were the only ones around today.  There were no cars in the parking lots, no cars in the campgrounds.  I put the leashes in my backpack where they stayed for the duration of the hike. Weather was calm, too, for the first two miles, but then we hit the high winds in the exposed last half mile. Temperatures dipped into the 50s on the peak and our hands were getting cold.  I'm so glad I had an old black fleece jacket in the truck, because I had left my red rain jacket in the bedroom!

We stayed on the peak only long enough to drink water, eat a snack, take a few photos and for the dogs to get their chicken jerky strips.  That didn't stop them from begging for more, though, when Ellen brought out her own jerky to munch on.

The wildflowers are now all gone.  The aspens are barren.  There were still some yellow ash in the higher elevation, and we spotted some reds in a few deep crevasses.  But we didn't see much else.  No birds, no deer, just some scat here and there.   The ridgeline was a dead brown. I noticed quite a few fallen trees since my last visit, mostly dead aspen across the higher trail.  Someone had also written some graffiti in a few rocks along the trail.

One thing we both noticed was the healthy growth of the young pines that have sprouted since our 2011 fire. Some of the pines are now six feet tall!  That is promising for the next generation of trees to shade the hikers passing through.

I was back home by 4:20pm, which allowed me to take the other dogs on a short walk before dark.  Sadie and Zeke went along anyway (so much for being tired!).  That added another 1.7 miles to the day's total.

Ellen posted some beautiful photos of our hike today.  I found her photos better than mine, so I will post hers here.  She captured some nice shots of the dogs walking right by my side.   Ellen and I have always done a winter hike up Miller peak after the first snow.  I hope we can do that in December before my road trip back to Chicagoland.