SPRING COULD WELL be my favourite season in the High Country. The fading away of feet of snow, the re-emergence of the living earth after being buried for so long, the first flush of green, the first flowers, the return of blissful warmth on bare arms and legs that had previously been encased in layers of protection… how can any season top that?
Then again, in autumn I tend to celebrate the landscape’s transformation into fiery hues as though it’s the best thing ever, and in winter every single snowfall typically sends me jumping about like an over-excited toddler on Christmas morning. So perhaps I don’t really have a favourite season. But, spring: ah! When I’m living it I can’t imagine any time of year that’s better. The white-to-green transformation truly has me living in the moment, appreciating the moment, and lost in the moment. It has me feeling like the land itself: reborn, ALIVE!
The year’s spring seemed to arrive with unusual speed. In May I was still snowshoeing. I was still pitching my shelter atop a deep snowpack. The biting-cold May nights still furred my tent with frost. Gloves remained essential by day. But by mid-June, with the sun high overhead, all those feet of snow had all but vanished. Suddenly, as though in the blink of an eye, it was shorts and tee-shirt weather. It was swimming in mountain lakes weather. It was marvelling at the astonishingly delicate but outrageously tough alpine flowers weather. How could five feet of snow vanish so swiftly? The land had been white since October. Eight months of winter. The Long White Season. And then it was gone, just like that.
The primary aim for this blog is to share a few photos of this dramatic change, to let the images tell the story of this thrilling winter-to-spring white-to-green transition…
And hopefully, too, to share a little of how I feel about this change…
The story opens in late May, above, in a landscape and conditions notably different from those I knew growing up. Back then and there, in the suburbs of London, spring typically started in March and by late May the season usually felt far more like summer than winter. But the seasons here in Colorado are truly different! The photo above marked the first warm day of the year that I’d experienced in the High Country, the first real day of spring. My gloves were off, finally. And yet, snow still lay deep. I still needed snowshoes to travel.
Two weeks earlier the willow maze pictured above had been completely buried beneath five feet of snow. Crossing it on firm snow had been easy. But now at May’s end the snowpack was thawing fast and what was left was sugar-soft. Travel through this willowy and still-snowy ‘maze’ was slow and taxing. Meanwhile, above the mountains, dark clouds were building in the day’s relative warmth, threatening thunder and lightning.
I made camp a few minutes before the first of the day’s storms hit. For half an hour thunder rumbled and rain, then snow, fell. The last day of May had never looked like this in London!
By late afternoon the storms had passed. Sunlight gleamed of the great sweep of white. The lake beneath camp barely showed.
Despite the wintry appearance of the landscape the season was spring and the days were long. Late in the evening I strapped my snowshoes back on and went for a leisurely wander about the cirque. I discovered a few exposed spots that matched what the season should look like. The land was emerging, after all.
I found an elevated perch above camp and whiled away the evening, savouring the peace and beauty of the location. Fierce winds had probably kept this spot free of snow for most of the winter. This cirque can be a savage place, but on this evening if felt benign and welcoming.
June began. Summer in many places – but not here! The night had been cold. A deep freeze. Frost within the tent. And the sun was a long-time coming over the high ridge. But finally the new month hit, and it soon felt wonderfully warm. Within minutes the snow began softening and dripping and gushing.
After striking camp I set off back down the valley, but stayed high on the sunny, south-facing slopes. After eight months of travel upon snow it felt good to finally be able to place my feet upon the land itself.
I didn’t travel far. The aim from this trip was to savour the landscape, immerse myself into it, not pass through. I camped in a spot visited several times during the previous winter. On the last visit a month earlier most of the willow clumps had been buried beneath five feet of snow. I was impressed with how swiftly the snowpack had thawed.
June 2nd dawned mild and sunny. It was the thirty-first anniversary of my ‘alpine bounce’ – the accident that changed my life. I spent the morning writing a blog post by hand: the story of my return to the site of the accident, the Hohtürli Pass, a year after it. It can be read here: A Return To Hohtürli.
On the hike out I passed by a location I’d grown to know well over the previous winter – the site of several camps and an igloo. Without snow, it barely seemed like the same place.
Commitments kept my out of the mountains for a couple of weeks. When I returned on June 15th it was like returning to another place. The speed of the change from winter to spring was astonishing.
Even the willows had greened up. From white to brown to green in less than two weeks.
There was very little snow left on the forest floor now. Only a few old drifts. In winter, the forest floor can feel close to lifeless, but released from the snowpack it had become an entirely new environment. Same location, different world!
I love the messy reality of the wilderness forest floor. I love the ongoing processes of life and death, of decay and renewal; the opportunism amid the chaos, the perseverance because what else is there to do in life but give it a go?; the myriad microcosms co-existing side by side, often diametrically opposed but inextricably linked and even dependent; the variety, the richness of detail and texture; each square foot a perfect wilderness in itself, a wilderness in miniature, an entire universe almost, to marvel at and cherish and visit with immense care… goodness, how I love the forest floor when released from its covering of snow!
I was soon back to a favourite place… and a favourite view, one I’d seen many times over the seasons. As always, though, it was different this time. Going back to a specific wilderness location is never truly going back. A place is always different. And with each return visit the place changes. Knowledge of it increases. Memories add up, layer upon layer. With each return visit a place grows. It becomes more than would ever seem possible from only one visit.
I realised later, when looking through old photos, that I’d visited the same location exactly one year earlier – on June 15th, 2023 – a complete coincidence. Here I was again, on June 15th, 2024! The coincidence gave me an opportunity to compare conditions, revealing that this year’s were far greener and with significantly less snow. Note the amount of snow on the mountain wall the previous year, above. Note the brown willows. Then compare with the shot below, 2024’s version…
