Dean Krakel

Looking down the cirque. Pikes Peak.

Now whose bright idea was this—Tom Brown and I trudging up the Barr Trail with heavy packs on a cold winter night?

“Help! Help!” A woman’s quavering voice in the darkness. “Help me. Pllllleeeease help!” She sounds desperate, distant, panicked.

“She may have fallen” T.B. conjectures. “Or worse….”

Ever on the lookout for a distressed damsel we flick our headlamps on, scan beams over rocks and pines. Shine them over the drop-off below us. Nothing.

“If you’re human please respond,” the voice wails.

“Hey!” I yell. “We’re human!”

“#@%@$@#%!!!!” She screams. “I thought you were a #&^#@$#* mountain lion!”

How could anyone confuse our heavy footed progress with a lion’s soft stalking?

“Mountain lions don’t make noise,” I yell back. Probably not very comforting to whoever she is. Wherever she is. Out there. Somewhere. No response. Good. A rescue would have screwed things up.

Turning the headlamps off T.B and I proceed onward and upward. A fat slice of silver moon illuminates the trail. Pikes Peak looms hard against the star lit sky. Getting to the top of that big thing–that’s the goal.
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This is my mom. At the pyramids of Giza, just outside traffic-filled Cairo. Photo by Ricardo Baca, The Denver Post

It’s such a surreal experience — standing at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Breathing the thick air, the sand beneath your feet and the sculpted rock under the weight of your hands. Taking it all in — three pyramids within throwing distance of modern urban sprawl. Registering the immensity, the antiquity. Questioning the impossibility of such an ancient feat. And, of course, fending off the relentless tout who really wants to sell you 10 postcards for six Egyptian pounds (about $1).

We did it. My 75-year-old mom and I tripped to post-revolution Egypt for two weeks, and we saw everything we wanted to see. Initially I was surprised my mom was into the trip. Then we planned it out, with the help of a savvy, backpacker-friendly travel agent — even as friends and family (concerned for our safety) tried talking us out of the trip.

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Ricardo Baca

Trip planning can be a blast. It can also be stressful. Guidebooks are a great starting place regardless.

Everybody has their own unique style of travel, right? It’s why people like to say, “If you travel well with somebody, you’ll be just fine when you _____________.” (Fill in the blank, really — “get married,” “move in together,” etc.)

For those playing catch-up, I recently got back from my first trip to the Middle East — two weeks with my girlfriend in Israel and Turkey, and two weeks in Egypt with my 75-year-old mom. This blog series is about the latter half of this trip.

Mom and I travel well together, but we do have different styles. I’m a backpacker — crowded bus terminals, on-the-fly decisions, hilarious amounts of discomfort and all. Surely if my mom were 40 years younger, she’d be into the comedy of 25-hour bus rides and dorm sleeping accommodations in gun-filled train station basements. But my mom isn’t a backpacker, and while she doesn’t need four-star hotels, she prefers to have a western toilet attached to her room.

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The author in a big gust of wind. Mt. Shavano. Sean Krakel

Damn this wind, I think, just as a thunderous roaring gust nearly knocks me off my feet–nearly blows me backwards off Mt. Shavano’s 14,229-foot summit. A quick boulder clutch with mittened hands saves me but in the process I gouge my knee on a pointed rock — you know, bang it in that really special place.

“Ouch,” I say, feeling dizzy, pressing my face against the boulder’s icy shoulder. Well maybe not “ouch,” but something like that.

“Winter’s coming,” my son Sean says, face buried in a hooded parka, oblivious to his father’s pain. “We better get down.”

Storm clouds swirl around us. Pellets of wind whipped snow rattle against our clothing. I’m wondering if I can even walk with the painful twinge in my knee. The bite valve on my hydration bladder is frozen solid.

Today is my birthday. I am 60 years old.

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Check out these two short videos about Daniel Suelo, who has lived without money in a cave near Moab, Utah for over 10 years. It’s an interesting study in economics, homelessness and personal philosophy.

The first one’s above; the second one’s here.

[/media-credit] Singletrack trail beneath autumn aspen trees on the east side of Kenosha Pass near Jefferson.

What’s the coolest Colorado thing to do in October? Well, okay, the second coolest thing?

Running amok among the autumn leaves, that’s what!

Enough of blossoms and flowers and green leaves and pitter-patter panting down a trail in shorts and t-shirt. Time to don the tights and jacket, suck in some frosty air and go for the gold. Or yellow. Or red. Or brown. Or orange. The high country is a kaleidoscope of color right now and what better way to see it then on a trail run?

How else to feel the crunch of fallen leaves and pine needles underfoot, to enjoy the weird, wild light filtering through leaves and forest, to smell the pungent scent of decay, to hug aspens and be one with the wind and the willows?

Julie Engel going strong at mile 18. Georgia Pass. Dean Krakel.

Past the prime viewing you say? Not really. Not yet. There’s still time. I know. I’ve been out there ummmm… doing research. And anyway, I prefer my leaf viewing past the prime. Fewer tourists.

I’m not going to list my entire favorite close to Denver places here. That’d be a long list and many of those trails are short: Three Sisters and Elk Meadow Open Space Park near Evergreen; Beaver Ranch near Conifer. Places I’m at all the time. Because I live close by. Would it be worthwhile to drive up from Denver to visit them? Hmmmm. Depends on much your while is worth I guess.

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This is absolutely adorable.

And just dead-on, if you’ve ever navigated a mountain bike down a narrow trail.

[/media-credit] Fern Lake to Bear Lake trail, Rocky Mountain National Park.

It’s the most colorful time of the year. Across the Colorado Rockies, clumps of trees in the pine forests are turning yellow, yellow, yellow. That’s because our Front Range deciduous stands are aspen, aspen and aspen. If you want something that looks a bit more like New England, try Steamboat Springs. It’s the only place I’ve seen in Colorado that really sprouts a variety of colors in autumn.

All the same, hiking through our yellow woods can be a gorgeous experience. My favorite autumn trails near Denver crisscross the aptly named Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Last fall a ranger there recommended a hike to Frazer Meadow, where the modest metal home of John Frazer, a one-legged homesteader, still rusts in an open field encircled by aspens. I hiked there via Ralston Roost, a relatively strenuous approach that crests with a great view of the Rockies from the roost’s craggy summit. Dude’s Fishing Hole, a pond in the aspens, is another good place to take a sandwich and a camera in Golden Gate Canyon.

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The setting is relaxing and inviting at Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Ore. (Photo by Kyle Wagner)

As a travel creature of habit, when I visit a city on my own dime, I tend to stay in my favorite hotels and do the same things I’ve done on past trips.

So it’s no surprise that a recent visit to Portland, Ore., found me nestled once again in the comfy confines of the Hotel Monaco Portland, which sits within easy walking distance of one of my go-to food cart pods (Alder Street between 9th and 11th, and I’ve written about my favorite food carts here before), as well as a fast jog to the Willamette River, necessary so I can go to Voodoo Doughnut and Stumptown Coffee.

The Monaco is also a reasonable jaunt to Powell’s City of Books and Lan Su Chinese Garden.

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Bighorn sheep blocked traffic, some hoping to be fed. (David Olinger, The Denver Post)

Bighorn sheep and mountain goats mobbed the Mount Evans highway this summer. On a recent visit, I’d estimate we saw 150 or so, all within a mile of the summit, near the road, walking beside the road, blocking traffic on the road. It was an amazing sight, and like everyone else around me, I was clicking away madly with my camera. I’d never seen so many before.

The sheep and goat show is great for visitors, maybe not so great for the animals. Some of the bighorns boldly walked up to our car window, expecting to be fed. Obviously they had been, and often enough to develop a begging habit.

That can be a fatal habit, a forest ranger once told me, especially for the newborns. They hang around the road, feeding from cars all summer, then starve in the winter when the cars go away.

The highway was closed at Summit Lake this month, five miles from the mountaintop, so seeing them now may require some high-altitude walking. Here’s hoping the little ones have time to learn how to live on a tundra diet.

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