August 11th, 2009.

While on our two week loop of Southwest Colorado we planned three days around Buena Vista which sits at the foot of several Sawatch 14ers. The two big attractions to staying nearby were the natural hot springs and the peaks. The most well know hot springs are the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, which is a hot spring and spa resort that seems to lately be on the upswing. We also found that there are nearby cabins that have there own private hot springs at the “Antero Hot Springs” and we decided to stay there. Personally I find it much more relaxing to not have a lot of other folks around and having our own hot spring just outside our cabin was just fantastic and worth it.

Since there is a 4wd road up Baldwin gulch we took the short drive up to it to get a sense of what kind of condition it was in and take a guess at how long it would take us to get to where we wanted to hike from. With Anna being nine years old and my wife not having done any 14ers yet it seemed wise to try to drive up close and leave just the last mile and a half to climb up. So we guessed at 2 hours for the drive and 3 hours for the hike. The weather looked great for us to give it a shot and we decided to head out at a reasonable early time of 7am.

Getting there:
We drove west toward St. Elmo on Chaffee County Road 162 and another 10 miles on the dirt road to reach the signed Baldwin Gulch Jeep Road (also listed as the 277 Road).

You can park here, there are plenty of pull-offs along the road. This is the lower trailhead and its a long way from here. Short, high-clearance 4WD vehicles can drive up the 277 road, our stock 04 Jeep Liberty did fine. Above the river crossing (10,850′), there are dispersed camping spots along the side of the road as it leads to multiple switchbacks up to the saddle. We parked at the saddle and made our way up the ridge line to the top.

I took a chisel-peen hammer to prospect for Aquamarines and I think we actually did find some Garnets. It was a great trek for Chris and Anna to get on top of their first 14er with the added bonus of Gem-Hunting near the summit. If you want to see some of the nicest aquamarines found on Antero, stop at the “Rock Doc” back on US285. We picked up a few carats of Aquamarine there and they have nice examples of the things folks prospect for on Antero.

Living near Boulder Colorado I’ve gotten used to hearing the expression “It sure Smells Like Snow” from the fall through the winter and into the spring.
Huh?
The reason why is called “Upslope” and when we have upslope conditions we often get pounded with new snow along the front range. The reason people say “It Smells Like Snow” is that there are huge Pig Farms east of Boulder towards Greely and eastern parts of Colorado, and during real upslope conditions the air starts to stink a little bit! Upslope conditions exist when surface air flow forces a given parcel of air uphill in our case from the East toward the West. When this air parcel travels back uphill, the ambient pressure decreases, because pressure always decreases with altitude in any fluid. Look up your Gas Laws. In a hurry, you’ll see that if the ambient pressure is lower than that of the parcel’s, the volume of the parcel must increase, and then the temperature must decrease so the parcel can assume the same pressure as its environment. The parcel is introduced into a new lower pressure. It wants to be at that pressure too, but in order to that, it must cool down. In nerd-ease, this is called adiabatic expansion. In the winter this equals a Big Powder Day.
In the Animation above you can see what a winter upslope condition looks like on radar. Notice how you can see the pattern of the weather moving counter clockwise backing into the Rockies. Time to get the board out!

Columbia University physicist Brian Greene recently chose the winner of the String Theory in Two Minutes or Less user-generated video contest… nice presentation of an abstract idea.