Whipple Trail - Pine Valley 8-9-08

This was a beautiful, although long, hike.

If you look at the map, you can see that the hike can be done as a loop, but we just did the upper Whipple trail to Whipple Valley, and it took eight hours, so the loop would be an all-day hike or overnighter. I'd like to go back and do the lower Whipple Valley trailhead someday.

We started our hike with a trip into the Pine Valley Lodge country store. You can buy sandwiches there, but it'll cost you about $6-$7, so we settled for some banana marshmallow cookies.

The hike started out with some switchbacks all the way up the side of the mountain, so we got a really nice view of the town of Pine Valley.

On the way up, we saw a butterfly, just emerging from its cocoon, sunning its wings.

There were a lot of quaking aspen and pine along the trail.

And a cool, twisted tree stump.

Aye yi yi - the switchbacks were killer - at times, it seemed the hill would never end! This is not a trail for the faint of heart!!



But in the end, we were rewarded with a beautiful meadow.


And some very colorful bees and butterflies.


It seemed like heaven after the long hike.

And on the way home, we dipped our feet in a refreshingly cool pond.

Here's a link to the full album.