Willow Lake Trail

When we first landed in Crestone... err, drove into town? Really, landed feels more accurate, we put down our things and took a walk through town. In the small crystal/VHS video rental shop the store-keeper mentioned Willow Lake hike. When we did a little more research we saw that this 9 mile, 3,000 ft ascension was listed as one of the most scenic in all of Colorado!

On our last day in Crestone our poor little rental car climbed up to the trail head through pot-holed, rock-strewn, unpaved roads. I love how much parts of the US can feel like anywhere else in the world. I love the world when it's less sanitized and civilized.

Kevin had tried to get some info on this trail but hikers are notoriously rough communicators. On the Boulder retreat we kept asking returning hikers how long it would take us to get to the Royal Arches. Without fail they'd say something innocuous and falsely encouraging like, "15 more minutes!" An hour later we'd find more hikers who'd say the same.

And on the descent, happy, completely disoriented, we became them.

Armed with this complete lack of information, we set off.

The landscape did shift beautifully and wildly. We wandered on switchbacks in the woods to open meadows to sheer rockscapes.

We only encountered two other hikers and that's when we were about a mile from the parking lot. As we were on the descent, Kevin mislead them WILDLY on how far to the lake. He still feels bad about that.

We started at Crestone's elevation of around 8,000 ft above sea level. We ascended 4.5 miles upto 11,000 or so ft above sea level. My ears continued popping. I stopped frequently on the vertical ascent to catch my breath. Between altitude sickness and where I was with my cold it often felt hard to breathe. But once I recovered, the air tasted good and I felt better than if I stayed inside.

As with everything in this corner of the world, distance and effort felt unpredictable. The usual markers we offer ourselves were meaningless. We were working in a different spatial paradigm. Endless up. Endless quad burning. Endless panting lungs.

Until.

Willow Lake sits in an alpine mountain crevice. The water bubbles out of the mountain, springs into the lake, and then drops into waterfalls and rivulets before winding a creek through the valley below.

A lake. In a mountain, Improbable. Clear. Empty. Beautiful.

Of course, Kevin stripped down and jumped in. He said he lost his breath for a moment. He said he found God.

Air temp was about 50. The sun was hot when it reached you but clouds moved quickly through the sky and sometimes lost you in shade. The water had some ice on it and there was snow on the shore.

After endless ascension-- well, 4 hours of it, we descended the 4.5 miles and 3,000 ft in 2 hours. We basically skipped like mountain goats.

When we drove out of town the following day I still felt the climb in my body. I love coming home with remnants of a place in my skin.