Mt. Parnassus

I went for a slightly longer hike on Sunday, about 7.4 miles, an out and back up to the top of Mt. Parnassus (13,574 ft or so). This location was selected in part due to proximity to Denver, ease of access to the trail head (literally just off the highway), and low-moderate technical difficulty. For the first part of the hike there was an easy trail to follow, but then we mostly just aimed ourselves to the top of the peak and tried to not quite just go straight up. (Edit – from my hiking partner, “Strictly speaking we were first aiming for the saddle between Parnassus and the mountain to the west, but then we cut the corner a little.” I was following him. It felt like up and from time to time a reprieve with a switch back or something!) Our paths up and down didn’t overlap completely.

We started out just before 7 a.m. with the goal of missing the forecast thunderstorms which were expected to start around noon. There was one stream crossing. Heading up we avoided the single log “bridge” and instead waded through the water. Coming back down we took our chances with the log. I timidly crawled across the log and then watched about a half dozen people confidently walk across the thing.

I don’t think I’ve ever hiked across tundra before. It’s amazingly soft and beautiful. All of the flowers were blooming, close to the earth. And I saw my first Pika. I was too slow to catch a photo of my own but it was one of the cutest (dare I say adorable?) animals I’ve ever seen.

We lucked out and did not hit much snow on our hike, although we could see it on all of the peaks near us. On the way up we crossed a smaller snow field, but were able to avoid it coming down.

The clouds gathered but the forecast lightning did not strike. We got drizzled on a bit hiking out, but not enough to impel us to pull out the rain jackets. I was back in Denver in time for my regular afternoon hot yoga class!