Above the Clouds on Mount Evans Part One

One of our favorite places to visit in Colorado is Mount Evans. If you look at my blog sidebar you will see a label towards the middle that says Mt Evans with a 4--I've blogged about trips up this mountain 4 times before and if you click on that label --click here--you can read all four posts. Because of Covid-19 precautions, the road was closed for one year to cars, and the next year a reservation system was instituted to keep crowds at a controllable level. The reservation system worked so well that it is still in effect, so this summer my family made reservations for a day that turned out not to be the best weather, but it also gave us a view of the mountain that was unique!

Mount Evans has an elevation of 14,260 feet (4,346.5 M) and has North America's Highest Auto Road.  The Mount Evans Scenic Byway climbs over 7,000 feet in its 28-mile length, reaching an altitude of 14,130' feet. The drive offers visitors scenic views of the Continental Divide, mountain goat, and bighorn sheep herds, marmots, birds, and alpine wildflowers..... 

...as well as Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine trees.

I blogged about these ancient bristlecone pines trees once before--on this link. They are located on a part of the drive in an area called the Mount Goliath Natural Area which is managed in cooperation between Denver Botanic Gardens and the US Forest Service. Some of the trees are between 900 to 2,000 years old!  On this trip, we did not stop as usual to visit the nature center as the weather was very overcast and we were concerned that we would be driving through a thunderstorm.

As you can see from the photo above,  the clouds were heavy and some raindrops were falling. Usually, this view of the continental divide is very scenic 

 

But although the distant views were obscured the rising clouds were amazing to see.

It was like being in heaven and looking down at the earth from our own cloud!

As we continued to drive in some areas the skies were dark and the clouds began to bring pelting rain.

In other areas, we were above the clouds again!

Because of the inclement weather not many cars were on the scenic byway that day. You can see from all the rocks in the terrain the Rocky Mountains are aptly named.

The Mount Evans Scenic Byway is a narrow road with one lane in each direction and is always under repair due to the extreme weather conditions the mountain experiences every year. It has no side rails and at times nerves of steel are needed to drive around mountain curves that look like they head right off the mountain!

Although this was the last week in July, and Colorado has had high summer temperatures, there were still patches of snow in some areas.

The temperature does get lower the higher the road climbs and one year we actually drove through a snow storm during the last five miles on the first day of summer--click here-- to see that post!

We did stop at Summit Lake as we all had to use the restroom facility, but it was raining so we did not take a hike there as we usually like to do. Summit Lake is at 12,840 feet (3,913.632 M) which is well above the tree line, and there are always beautiful alpine flowers located there on the tundra--as you can see on this past post--click here.

We continued our drive to the summit and at this point, we were encased in fog at times!

We even followed a bicycle rider at one point as we were afraid to pass him!

If you look closely at the photo above you can see two people wearing turquoise walking up a trail.

The switchback trail leads from a parking lot that is close to the top of the Mount Evans Summit!  

In the past, we always parked and walked up the last 130 feet to the summit, but since at this high elevation it was cold at 40 degrees F (4.444C), and raining we decided we'd not chance it. We were also worried about possible lightning.

The ruins of the Crest House which was once a visitors center, restaurant, and gift shop that opened in 1941, but sadly burned in 1979 by a propane accident.  A smaller restroom facility was built in this area afterward.

In this area, there are some observation decks and telescopes. 

There are also usually many mountain goats and sheep in this area but they were all hiding this day -the photo above is from a past visit. If you look at this post--click here-- you can see that they walk around very close to all the visitors and are quite photogenic!

You can see a portion of the scenic byway we traveled in this photo and that we were above many clouds!

A warning sign at the parking lot with all good advice.  Altitude sickness is always a danger for someone not acclimated to this high elevation.  

We took quick photos by the sign and hopped back into our car for the ride down--a part two blog post of that drive will be on next week's post.  

Meanwhile, Happy Month of August!  

Summer is flying by!

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