A Day in the Woods –

It all started one morning while I was staying at a friends cabin in Grand Lake Colorado.

I decided to go check out this small lake that was up the hill behind the cabin because I planned to go fishing there the next day. It was a gentle climb up the hill and I thought it would be a short hike to find the fishing spot.

Well, it didn’t take too long for me to get distracted. As I was walking up the path I noticed several bus-sized boulders on the edge of a cliff about 100 yards away. So I headed in that direction.

How excited I was to discover this view out over Grand Lake and beyond. I was above the clouds, I guess you’d call it a fog bank, and all I could see was white fluffy fields of cotton candy, as far as my eyes could see. It was stunningly beautiful, so I decided to sit down and enjoy the view.

The sun had only been up a few hours, so it was still in the process of burning off the fog. After a few minutes I noticed a mountain peak appeared through the top of the cloud in front of me, I’m guessing it was about 30 or 40 miles away. Within a few minutes I started to see another mountain top breaking through the cloud bank off to my left. At this point I decided to hang out for a while and see what else might be revealed to me.

Over the next 15 to 20 minutes another five, slightly snow-topped mountain peaks were exposed. Because these peaks were sort of in a row and still had some snow, I realized what I was seeing was the Continental Divide, mountains that I believe are all over 14,000 feet high. Since it was June the snow had been in the process of melting for several weeks. The elevation at Grand Lake is 8,369 ft. and there really wasn’t much snow on the ground there, as it had already melted in the city.

So I went back in the woods to continue my hike. Eventually I saw what looked like a small wall of dirt and snow in the shadows off to my left and slightly elevated, I believed it was the edge of the lake. I really didn’t want to mess with that wet snow so I just continued my walk through the woods.

It wasn’t too long before I heard a roaring sound that kind of sounded like a waterfall. About 2 minutes later I came upon a scene that is a little difficult to describe. I remember telling my friends it looked like a horizontal waterfall. It was rushing out of a breach in the dirt/snow bank that surrounded the lake. Because of the pressure, the water shot out about 40 or 50 feet and looked like a waterfall laid down on its side. It had almost vertical sides, was about 3 feet high and about 15 feet wide.

As I got closer to the water the noise increased dramatically and there was a mist in the air. I literally stood there for 5 minutes just watching this thing as it slowly disintegrated. Boy did I wish I had brought a camera. This happened in the 1980s, so there were no smart phones. This was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event that I wish was documented, but at least I was there in person, and I feel very privileged to have witnessed it.

I continued my walk, meandering through the woods in no particular direction, just enjoying the seemingly playful frolic of the squirrels and the musical sounds of birds flitting amongst the trees. Eventually I came upon a large wedge-shaped boulder in the middle of the woods. I believe Grand Lake was originally a volcano and therefore I was not surprised to see a large boulder in the middle of the woods. It was about 30 ft. long and about 5 ft. high on the tall end.

I decided to walk up the ‘ramp’ to see if I could get a better view, as I needed to get a bearing on my location. I had been walking for hours, and at this point I realized I no longer knew the location of the fishing lake or the town of Grand Lake, my starting point. I slowly walked up to the high end of the boulder where I was completely shocked by what I saw.

There he was, this big beautiful bull elk, literally 15 feet in front of me, about 3 feet from the edge of the boulder. The boulder must have blocked the sound of me approaching the elk, so he didn’t hear me coming. He was so close I remember thinking I could almost reach out and touch him.

I remember staring into that big giant eye as it stared directly back at me. His eye was huge, it seemed like it was the size of a small orange. We looked at each other for a few seconds and then we both bolted in opposite directions in a frantic attempt to get away from each other.

Wow! So far I am having a hell of a day. But coming across this big elk made me realize there could be other large animals in my area, like a bear. So now, here I am lost in the woods concerned about accidentally coming across a bear. Up to this point I have been walking through the woods silently, but now I’ve realized I need to start making noise as I walk, so I did. Fortunately the rest of the day I did not have an encounter with any wildlife bigger than me.

It’s hard to say how long I walked when I came upon a tiny stream of water because I had lost all concept of time quite a while ago. I was pretty worn out from my walk at this point but fortunately my brain was still functioning, I realized this little stream has to lead me to Grand Lake, and back to the cabin. I think I found a way home.

So I followed the stream downhill. It wasn’t very big, only about a foot wide, but it was steady and heading in the right direction. Eventually the stream connected to another stream, forming a little pond about 4 feet wide. It was here I decided I needed to take a break and sat down at the water’s edge. Now what! Of course a thousand mosquitoes showed up and I felt I was going to be badly bitten.

I was surrounded by mosquitoes, the buzzing was horrendous. I thought to myself, “maybe I can ‘will’ them away”. You never know, it might work. I don’t know if it was my odor or the willpower, or maybe the mosquitoes weren’t hungry, but I did not suffer one single bite. It was a miracle. There were still hundreds of mosquitoes around me, but they seemed to not want to have anything to do with me.

My little break encouraged me to get up and follow the stream down to Grand Lake before it got dark. The last thing I wanted to do was be in the woods at night, I wasn’t prepared for that.

The good news is, I wasn’t too far from the town at that point, it was only about another half-mile before I saw the shimmering light reflected off the lake’s surface. I would be home soon enough.

When I finally reached the cabin I was surprised to realize I’d been gone about eight hours. I’m lucky I made it back when I did because in the mountains the sun goes down a little earlier and I only had a few more hours of sunlight left. My timing couldn’t have been better, my friends were about to head up to the bar to have dinner and a few beers. I was famished and thirsty.

The food was hot, the beer was cold, the view was incredible, and my friends were fantastic. It was a wonderful day, one I’ll remember the rest of my life.

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Thank you for reading my article.