Catching the Larches

This Sunday we packed up and headed east on Highway 20. Joshua thought he had this great fall loop hike, it has great sweeping views, it's a loop, a few lakes dot the trail. So we get on the trail and realize it actually had a pretty big dusting of snow the last few days and our fall hike is now a winter hike. At first we were a tad disappointed, and cold, but then we spotted the larches! We have been trying to catch these stunning golden trees. They are coniferous trees that loose their needles so they turn bright yellow. We've tried to catch them since we've lived here and always been too early, too late, hit the wrong spots. This loop was full of them, and the snow actually made them pop in a really magical way.

We started by heading up the steep side of the loop first so we had the first half of the trail almost to ourselves. The bright larches were so fun that we let our fingers get numb snapping photos of them.

The hike down from the pass we ran into gobs, I mean gobs of people hiking toward us. We were so glad we went the opposite way. The blue sky started peeping out more on our way down and the snow was much heavier on this side of the pass. Once we were out of the hike we headed to burger barn where we shared an oreo milkshake and an entire lap full of curly fries.