Living Our Dream: Agnes Vaille Falls Trail at Mt. Princeton

Buena is not pronounced 'bwenna', the Spanish way, but 'bew-na' because of the play on beautiful to describe this area. And it's beautiful! But everyone calls Buena Vista BV instead and I'll do that.

Raining but we decided to drive up to that top for views

We were at 12,126 feet

12 14teeners all around us, some are still snow capped. And BV is the whitewater capital of the world, or so they say. We heard folks talking in the grocery store in different languages coming here for the whitewater of the Arkansas River, and the whitewater rafting companies line the streets between Nathrop - the town we are in which is 8 miles south of BV - and BV. Bus loads of people with rafts tied up behind coming and going up and down to launch on the Arkansas River. There are many classes of rapids here, easy to extreme. No, we won't be doing that, but maybe with the kids we will do the family tour which is type 1 only.

Alpine Lake, notice snow - and it was cold up there!

Don't know what this bush was, but boy, did it smell great!

After grabbing breakfast out yesterday we stopped at the Chamber of Commerce's visitor's center and the lady provided us with tremendous resources of things to do, sights to see, hiking, gawking at the rafters, shopping, etc. We did learn that the one road over the Cottonwood Pass which is west of town, would be shutting down Monday, the 18th for a year, if we wanted to see some fantastic views, we should drive up to the pass and look around. Even though it was drizzling, we decided to go.

Hiked up the Continental Divide Trail a tidge

Road blocked to all traffic to continue westbound

Standing by a snow bank, looking back down the road we drove up

Fantastic! And cold, 42 when we stepped out of the car. Snow, wildflowers just coming out, the smell of sage and pine, wonderful! We walked just a tidge on the Continental Divide trail, it was a little too dreary and the threat of rain was all around us. They say to be very careful in the mountains due to thunderstorms, they can be quite dangerous, so we did not venture far from the car. There were so many trails to do on the way to the Pass, but the road will be closed and we cannot get to them so we will have to find some other trails to do while here. And there are so many.

Beautiful phlox just coming out

Too bad sun was not out - would have been stunning

At the top we saw where they had closed off the road and construction was going on, took some more gawking views, then headed back down. By the time we got to BV, the weather had cleared somewhat and decided to drive up to Mt. Princeton and beyond and head to the Agnes Vaille Falls trail and do a quick hike. Had a little trouble finding the trailhead, but once we located it, donned our hiking stuff and off we went.

Found the trail, start at base of Chalk Cliffs

Sad that Agnes fell off mountain (Longs Peak) but survived,
only to die of freezing. Jo Witchery was from Mansfield, OH. Huh.

We were hiking up to a waterfall on Chalk Creek, same creek that we are camping by. And it really looks like chalk. Hindsight - when we got to the waterfall, we were in dangerous landslide area. A couple years ago a family of 5 were killed when a rockslide came down on them. We stayed far enough back and I could see how they got in trouble - the cliffs overhead were awesome but scary. The waterfall was pretty but I would say the surroundings were not so. Everything looked washed out and very chalky.