Chance of rain today was high but not until 3 PM so we left really early to hike in Grand Mesa National Forest on the Crag Crest Trail. This is a 5 mile round trip hike with a vertical gain of about 1000 feet. Normally this wouldn't be so bad except this hike started at over 10,000 above sea level and wound up at over 11,000 feet. Yes the air was pretty thin up there. Unfortunately it started to rain lightly after about the first hour and nearly 600 feet up and the temperature dropped to about 45. Eventually the rain stopped and I made it almost to the top before my knee told me "enough already!". Seeing we were so close to the top Vaughan went on leaving me sitting in the pines on the side of yet another cliff and shivering. The hike which passed numerous lakes and millions of flowers & birds was worth the chill-to-the-bone wet cold - no, really, it was. It began raining harder when we were nearly back at the car. We didn't take a lot of pictures due to the rain and gloomy skies.
Afterwards we drove back through the quaint towns of Marble & Redstone. Marble is aptly named for all the marble they mine. Every house in town had huge blocks of marble in the yards. There were a number of artists that carve some amazing statues. Redstone is a small mining town and the picture below is of the coke ovens. I'll explain later --
This is one of the many lakes in Grand Mesa.
Upper Eggleston Lake on Crag Crest hike.
View of Butts Lake from the top of Crag Crest.
This picture and the next show the actual Crest at 11,000+ feet.
This is a beaver dam we saw along the way.
There were many amazing sculptures in marble in Marble.
The coke ovens were constructed like beehives. Coal was loaded in a hole in the top and converted to coke when heated in an oxygen-deficient environment. The coke was then removed from the front opening.
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