Author: tyler

Pic: Poutine, kinda. Southern Sun Pub and Brewery, Boulder, CO

The plan was to hike to Devil’s Head Lookout, “the last of the seven original Front Range Lookout towers still in continuous use”.[1] These days, fire-spotting is a game played mostly with aircraft.

Yet, after navigating past four-wheelers in one of those aforementioned OHV areas, I learned that the trail was CLOSED for the week. Isn’t this the kind of information the forest service should put on its website, or, at the very least, tell me about in person when I visit the forest office and ask about this hike specifically? #ThanksObama.

With no internet, no backup plan, and no desire to hang out with dirt bikes zipping around, I proceeded to Sedalia in hopes it was a real town with services.

Nope!

I think there was a general store. It may or may not have been open.

“HILLARY AND OBAMA LIE AND SUCK”
–hand-drawn sign on a house in Foxton, CO

I continued on to Castle Rock, which was a real town — including Mexican food! And shitty LTE coverage, demonstrating the maxim that one bar of signal is no bars, two bars is one bar (aka Good Luck With That), and three bars is some actual internet.

Ultimately I got a hold of Kevin, who agreed to meet for ice cream, beers, and “poutine”[2] in Boulder.

I looked for camping in the hills outside of Boulder but, as Dave put it, “There’s sites, but they’re used pretty heavily between the party crowd, the shooting crowd, and the transient / rainbow crowd.” I took in the sunset from a high point, then imposed upon Dave and Julie’s hospitality a day earlier than scheduled.

 

[1] Devil’s Head Trailhead #611

[2] As someone who has gotten no closer to real poutine than Toronto, even I know that no cheese curds = no poutine. To be fair, the resulting dish was quite satisfying regardless of authenticity.

Pic: LPT: Be like this tree — adapt! Colorado Trail, Pike NF, CO

National Parks get all the press, but National Forests are the workaday heroes of public lands. Forestry management is a complex and tricky topic, lying at the intersection of environmental conservation, public recreational access, agricultural business interests, and power struggles between local and federal governments. In spite of all this contention, I think it’s cool that I can visit the “Land of Many Uses” and find hiking trails, biking trails, off-highway vehicle areas, wilderness areas where no vehicles are allowed, wildlife refuges, hunting, boating, fishing, timber extraction, and developed and dispersed camping — all within a few miles of one another.

I also like when capitalist/free market forces are employed for good:

Pic: Only you can prevent capital losses. Pike NF, CO

I feel like this marketing campaign may reach people who otherwise wouldn’t listen to an anthropomorphic bear or treehugging hippie rhetoric.

Pic: Found the snow line! Above Tanglewood Creek, Pike NF, CO. Larger image

After a week of comfortable but noisy luxury, I was ready to give my gracious Denver-area hosts a break (thanks Nat and Sarah! thanks Doug and Michelle! thanks Ben’s hotel points program!) and get out in the woods for a few days. The Flaming Lips show had been the last fixed date on my calendar. With no impending deadlines of any kind (except for running out of money eventually), I was eager to slow my pace of exploration even further.

I planned to visit a few more friends in Boulder so I didn’t want to stray too far. I had just driven through the Front Range west of Denver; those mountains still held an awful lot of snow. My trajectory in the coming weeks would lead me north to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks and I would hit Rocky Mountain NP on the way. Eastern Colorado is basically Kansas. This left me with Pike National Forest, a couple hours southwest of Denver.

I found some dispersed camping and a couple of trails near Tanglewood Creek. June had arrived; how cold could it possibly be at 9200 feet? Oh, it’s dumping big slushy hailstones? Ok.

The hike was… not awesome. It started pleasantly enough, following Tanglewood Creek through dense pine forest for the first mile or two:

Pic: I’ll stop the world and melt with you. Tanglewood Creek, Pike NF, CO

The route hugged the shady side of the valley, maximizing snow retention and jealously guarding any view of the surrounding mountains until I reached the tree line. There, the trail left the creek and switchbacked up to a saddle between Mt. Rosalie and Rosedale Peak. Well, that’s what the maps claimed anyway — this is where I lost any hint of the trail. No signs, no markers, no cairns, just snow and willows. I picked my way up the hillside for a while, got high enough for some view of the area, and abandoned my summit bid.

On the way down, my expert pathfinding had me postholing through rotten, waist-deep snow while whacking through head-high bushes. By the time I stumbled back onto the trail, which alternated from slippery freeze-thaw hardpack to wet stones perfectly-sized for rolling an ankle, I was wet and tired. I had also lost my Nalgene somewhere. On the bright side, I found a well-used trekking pole while crashing through a willow on the way down the hill.

I limped back to camp, where a thundershower greeted me just as I set my gear out to dry. Quite a reintroduction to the great outdoors.

Pic: End of May, pink and red sprinkles… what season is this exactly? King Soopers, Denver, CO

Pic: Better than a Diesel Treat. Lucky Pie Pizza and Taphouse, Denver, CO

Well I’ve tried ’em all and I might sound queer
But my favorite drug is a nice cold beer

–Asylum Street Spankers – Beer

Pic: Nice day for a ball game. Coors Field, Denver, CO

The Rockies got spanked but Nat and Sarah are transplanted Giants fans anyway.

Pic: #JustDenverThings. Denver, CO

If you, like many visitors, are hoping to commemorate your trip to the Centennial State with a hand-carved wooden flute, I know just the place.

Pic: What is a 3-word phrase that has never been uttered in my kitchen? Where the Buffalo Roam, 16th St, Denver, CO

Pic: KING LIFE. The 1up, Denver, CO

One of the fun things about widespread nostalgia for my childhood is that there are now arcades which are also bars that serve food. It had been a while since I’d played NBA Jam.

Pic: Suddenly, everything has changed. Flaming Lips with the Colorado Symphony, Red Rocks Amphitheater, CO

When I left California twenty-two days ago, today was one of two dates on my calendar: the Flaming Lips playing their incredible 1999 album The Soft Bulletin at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony!

The groundwork was laid back in February:

Matt: Whoah. I would go to Denver to hang out for a weekend and see this show.

Ben: I’ve always wanted to go to Red Rocks for a concert. I’m in.

Tyler: I can be in Colorado by late May. Let’s do it.

Nat: Sure.

Matt: Fuck! I can’t go.

Ben: lol

Nat: lol

Tyler: lol @ u

Further excerpts from the ensuing conversation:

Ben: People are “not” “allowed” to “smoke” “weed” in Red Rocks.

And:

Ben: My new boss (~same as the old boss) “warned” me that if you go to Red Rocks since marijuana legalization, you should expect a contact high.

Ben: Thanks, guy.

Tyler: As opposed to before legalization, when a psychedelic rock concert in the Denver area would have been more like a meeting of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

Red Rocks is a pretty sweet venue. I heard a lot of complaints about all the stairs but DAT VIEW.

The symphony aspect was mostly pretty cool, e.g. for the opening track. However the arrangement of Buggin’, one of my favorite tracks from the studio album, was symphony-only with no percussion. I didn’t like this since the best part is when the drums crash into the sweet harmonies and Wayne croons, “Well they flyyyy in the air…”. Without the snare hits, the transition felt a little flat to me.

The encore section, after TSB ended and the orchestra exited, was short but strong:

• Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1
• Do You Realize??
• Space Oddity (David Bowie cover and classy nod to the first big celebrity death of 2016)
• The W.A.N.D.

We marched back down the long flight of stairs, rescinded our doubts about the seemingly-awkward-but-actually-brilliant way the traffic control dudes had arranged parking, and drove home with the sky accelerating.

Pic: After a long drive, nothing refreshes like a jug of–wait, what? Grand Junction, CO

After a day that included a possibly illegal campsite, two national parks, dinner at Taco Bizzle in Grand Jizzle, and three hundred and fifty miles of I-70 through 10,600′ Vail Pass (still a lot of snow up here!), I was relieved to show up in downtown Denver on Nat and Sarah’s door. I was looking forward to a more relaxed pace of urban sightseeing, bizarre-product-placement spotting, and the Flaming Lips concert at Red Rocks coming up in just three days!