June 2021

Books read:

Tenth of December by George Saunders
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Trails walked:

Old Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park – June 7th
Cub Lake Loop in Rocky Mountain National Park – June 14th
Skyscraper Reservoir near Eldora, CO – June 22nd

Song(s) of the month – Joni Mitchell – River, A Case of You, Both Sides Now, The Circle Game, Big Yellow Taxi

Scientist Spotlight – Rosalind Franklin; DNA structure

June Summary: We had family visitors this month which impacted my reading and rambling a bit, but we love having visitors and taking them around the area to show how beautiful this place is. One highlight was a drive along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s a stunning drive and we saw moose, elk, and marmots at the various stops. But the mammal they were most in town to visit was our grandson and he made the visit special. He’s walking now and I’ve read recently that the fastest land mammal is a toddler who’s just been asked “what’s in your mouth?” I believe that this statistic is correct.

As killer heatwaves have gripped the western US and Canada this month, our Colorado town has had highs in the 70s and 80s. It did get to 100 a couple of times, but still cooled down to the low 60s at night. We’ve been lucky to escape the brunt of the heat. I’m not sure what it’s going to take for the world to take serious action on climate change. The heat dome causing 116-degree temps in Portland, Oregon has clear fingerprints of human caused global warming, yet we still argue with the climate scientists. At a climate conference I attended this month, one of the keynote speakers (Libertarian Jerry Taylor) used to work for the CATO institute for 23 years arguing against the climate scientists. But he’s changed his mind, not necessarily based on evidence (of which there is an abundance), but based on risk management (there is no Planet B so why not hedge our bets in case it’s real) and based on the lowering costs of non-carbon energy. In his speech he doubted that Republicans will come on board en masse on climate action until the party fixes its current culture war issues. So, we’ll keep getting hotter.

This month I read an entertaining book of short stories, a philosophical classic, and a contrarian book on risk management and decision making that still has me thinking, long after I’ve finished it. It’s been a good hiking month for animal sightings as the weather has improved, the babies are out, and there is plenty of food to forage on. So far, summer in Colorado has been amazing.

Scientist Spotlight – Rosalind Franklin: Born in Notting Hill, London in 1920 Franklin became a chemist and is now (posthumously) credited with discovery of the DNA’s double helix, although most people remember the names of Crick and Watson as discoverers of that structure which unlocked the mystery of what life is made of. Rosalind had an affinity for math since she was a young child and luckily her parents had the resources to send her to the only girls’ school in the area that taught math and physics. In her first research job she ended up working for the type of man that many women have encountered in their careers; he said this about her: "obstinate and almost perverse in argument, overbearing and sensitive to criticism.” How many strong, intelligent women have heard that said about them during their careers? She quit that lab and went to work for the British Coal Research Organization where she went on to discover certain properties of coal that led to improvement of gas masks during World War II. After the war she worked for a research organization in Paris where she learned about X-ray diffraction which was key to her eventual work on DNA structures. In 1950 she went to Kings College in London where she began her work on DNA. It seems that her directness with others (looking them in the eye, challenging them, etc.) led to her lab partner providing much of her research to Crick and Watson behind her back. They eventually published their work which used Franklin’s data in the publication Nature. Sadly, Franklin died in 1958 at the young age of 37 from ovarian cancer. Crick and Watson won the Nobel prize in 1962. It wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that Franklin’s work became recognized as having been critical to the work done by Crick and Watson. PBS aired documentaries about Franklin’s contribution in 2003 (DNA – Secret of Photo 51) and 2004 (DNA, The Secret of Life).

Song(s) of the month – This month marked the 50^th anniversary of Joni Mitchell’s Blue album. Fifty years! Where has all the time gone? It’s arguably her best album and also arguably one of the very best albums ever, by anyone. Here’s what Brandi Carlile said about it recently: “In my opinion, Blue is the greatest album ever made. Blue didn’t make me a better songwriter. Blue made me a better woman… No matter what we are dealing with in these times we can rejoice and know that of all the ages we could have lived through, we lived in the time of Joni Mitchell.” Two of the songs I selected are from the Blue album (River and A Case of You). I just couldn’t leave Both Sides Now off the list, and it would have easily been at home on the Blue album. Anyone who has seen Emma Thompson’s brilliant scene in Love Actually when she knew her husband was cheating on her while listening to this song knows its power. A Circle Game is one of the great songs written about life. River is my favorite Christmas song, even though it’s not really a Christmas song; everyone at some point wishes they had a river to skate away on. A Case of You is just a great love song, and with the sound of an Appalachian dulcimer to boot. And Big Yellow Taxi, written in 1970, seems a harbinger of climate change, although it was more of an environmental protest song at the time (you don't know what you've got till it's gone). Here are links to the songs:

River - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NH-ctddY9o

A Case of You - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o

Both Sides Now - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m_t3_1vbX8

The Circle Game - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9VoLCO-d6U

Big Yellow Taxi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

Tenth of December by George Saunders – Last month I read Saunders’ only novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, which I enjoyed a great deal. So, I decided to read some of his short stories. Tenth of December was published in 2013 and included stories he’d written in various publications since 1995. The collection won the Story and Folio prizes for fiction and was voted top 10 of 2013 by the New York Times Book Review. There are 10 stories, all of them interesting, some of them great. Escape from Spiderhead and The Semplica Girl Diaries could both have been amazing Black Mirror (or Twilight Zone) episodes. Victory Lap is like a modern-day Rear Window with teenagers in the roles of watcher and victim. And the title story is a dream-like story of a man with terminal illness trying to end his life and the young boy who tries to save him and includes all of life’s beauty and tragedy. All of the stories seem to have some social commentary and philosophy baked into them, whether it’s about life and death, or pain and suffering, or morality, or PTSD, or income inequality, or immigration issues. I would like to buy this book to have it on the shelf and reread some of these stories.

Here are a few lines:

The boy she’d first met with hair to his waist was now this old man shrunk with worry.

She wasn’t stupid. She just made bad choices. She remembered Sister Lynette saying, “Callie, you are bright enough but you incline toward that which does not benefit you.” Yep, well, Sister, you got that right…

If/when I die, do not want Pam lonely. Want her to remarry, have full life. As long as new husband is nice guy. Gentle guy. Religious guy. Very caring + good to kids. But kids not fooled. Kids prefer dead dad (i.e., me) to religious guy. Pale, boring, religious guy, with no oomph, who wears weird sweaters and is always a little sad, due to, cannot get boner, due to physical ailment. Ha ha.

Note to future generations: sometimes, in our time, families get into dark place. Family feels: we are losers, everything we do is wrong. Parents fight at high volume, blaming one another for disastrous situation. Dad kicks wall, puts hole in wall near fridge, family skips lunch. Tension too high for all to sit at same table. This unbearable. This makes person (father) doubt value of whole enterprise, i.e., makes father (me) wonder if humans would not be better off living alone, individually, in woods, minding own beeswax, not loving anyone.

Based on my experience of life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. And would go even further, to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you’ll probably make it worse.

Old Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park - This old road opened to the public in 1920 and was the first road into the park’s high alpine country. It is 9 miles long and rises in elevation from 8,500 feet to 11,800 feet along the steep slopes of Mount Chapin from Endovalley picnic area up to Trail Ridge Road at the Alpine Visitor’s Center. They’ve made it a one-way (uphill) road because if it wasn’t they would be scraping wrecked cars off of the bottom of the canyon. Luckily for me and other hikers and bikers, the road doesn’t open to vehicles for the summer until July, so I decided to walk part of it on this Monday. I walked 5.5 miles up the road, making this an 11-mile hike. The trailhead is at the Endovalley picnic area which is a great picnic spot with lots of shade and Fall River running through it. I parked under a shade tree and started walking up the road. It’s a fairly steady climb up (I gained 2,000 feet in 5.5 miles), but not too steep.

There were several hikers for the first 1.5 miles up to Chasm Falls, but after that I was pretty much on my own. Chasm Falls is impressive this time of year. Named because the water shoots through a narrow chasm in the canyon and then drops 25 feet. It was thundering today. After the falls it was mostly solitude, with the views getting better with each hairpin turn of the road (there are 16 total hairpin turns on this road and I hiked 12 of them!). There were waterfalls on both sides off in the distance melting the snow as they fell. To the south on a steep slope I saw some unusual tracks in the snow reaching to the top. I couldn’t figure out what they were until I saw 6 or 7 skiers flying down the slope. They rested a bit, then trudged back up the slope for another ride down. From a map I’m guessing they probably parked along Trail Ridge road near the Tundra Communities Trailhead, because getting to the base from Old Fall River road would have been nearly impossible (sadly a few days after my hike, a skier on this same slope lost his life after losing control). I kept an eye out for wildlife but found none on the way up other than a few shy marmots. So after I was halfway tired, I headed back down, content with the views and being in this beautiful place.

But then, around a mile down there were 2 adolescent male elk in the middle of the road. They didn’t seem too concerned about me, but I was cautious and waited to see if they would move. After a few minutes of them not moving, I slowly made my way past them, as far away as I could (which is only about 20 feet at that point) while trying to convince them that I meant no harm. They started heading up the hill at that point. A mile later I saw a female moose chewing on some leaves. She was not happy to see me and lowered her head and laid her ears back flat. I looked around for her baby but there was none and then I noticed how wide she was…. she was pregnant! I stood still, letting her know I was not a threat and she started eating again. I climbed up on a big rock, just in case, and sat there for half an hour just watching her and taking some video. She had the most incredible mane across her back which I had not noticed before in other moose I’d seen; maybe a result of her late pregnancy? Once she was far enough away from the road, I headed back down, feeling much better about my day after the elk and the moose. I kept my eyes on my right looking for more moose, when another mile down I saw a brown blurr go across the road. I turned just in time to see a bear staring at me, determining if I was either food or foe. Luckily he (she?) decided I was neither and headed up the hill. I was a bit too frazzled to get a photo (anyway, certain readers of this blog would claim that the photos I took were really of blurry rocks or bushes rather than a bear). OK, so now this has turned into an epic hike. Great beauty, great weather, and big animal sightings. Does it sound like I’m enjoying Colorado?

Bridge was out, changing my approach to the road

Fast water on Fall River

Chasm Falls

One of many falls along appropriately named Fall River

Great views east towards Estes Park

Those dots on the middle snow slope are crazy skiers

The river had hairpin turns too

Waterfall with nice rock formations

Young male elk along the road

Pregnant mama moose near the road. That mane!

Trail art...old wood sunbathing on a rock

Lucky for hikers, the road is closed until July

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse - Hesse (1877-1962) was a German novelist, poet, and artist. Perhaps this novel and Siddhartha were his most famous works. For most of my life, I knew Steppenwolf as a pretty decent late 1960s / early 1970s rock band (remember Born to be Wild from Easy Rider?). The novel Steppenwolf was published in German in 1927 and translated to English in 1929. I read the 1963 revised translation of Basil Creighton’s original 1929 version. It seems that much of his writing centers around “man’s search for meaning”; especially artistic people who generally feel lost in the world of “normal” people doing “normal” things like making a living, dancing, and having family dinner.

The novel is sort of a book within a book within another book. At the start, the narrator is the nephew of a woman who has taken in Harry Haller (the Steppenwolf) as a boarder in her home. The nephew is at first repelled and then drawn towards Harry and his unusual lifestyle and quirky personality. Harry leaves behind a manuscript of his life and philosophy which the nephew plans to publish. Then the actual manuscript, which reads like a diary is narrated by Harry who believes that he is not meant for this life. He believes that his dual personality (nice man / mean wolf) confines him to a life of unhappiness and that suicide is the only logical conclusion. Sometime during his wandering around the city he runs across a mysterious person who gives him a copy of a small book entitled Treatise on the Steppenwolf, which seems to be about Harry and his dual personality. THAT book is then presented in full, which for me was the really weak part of this novel as it was repetitive and not so interesting to read.

Eventually Harry’s wandering leads him to a woman named Hermine who recognizes Harry’s depressive state and seems to be the right person to cure him. She makes his life more interesting by showing him how it’s possible to enjoy things in a normal life such as jazz music and dancing and socializing. She agrees to continue to help him but asks him for something heavy in return that I won’t divulge here. This new life of Harry’s culminates in a grand Costume Ball which ends up in a sort of drug induced fantasy world (aka Magic Theater) where Harry experiences various fantasies that exist in his mind which, in the end, help to clarify his place in the world. The dramatic ending leaves the reader unsure whether Harry goes on living in the same way or is “cured” of his depression.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and all the ideas presented. It hits on some deep topics and was entertaining at the same time. I can see why it was a 60s cult classic, 30 years after it was written.

Here are a few interesting lines:

I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray who finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.

For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

I unlocked the door of my room, my little pretense of a home, where the armchair and the stove, the ink-pot and the paint-box, Novalis and Dostoyevsky, awaited me just as do the mother, or the wife, the children, maids, dogs and cats on the case of more sensible people.

…it is nobler and finer to be conquered by life than to fall by one’s own hand.

(man) is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit

…the bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.

And all this, I said, just as today was the case with the beginnings of wireless (radio), would be of no more service to many than as an escape from himself and his true aims, and a means of surrounding himself with an ever-closer mesh of distractions and useless activities (was he foretelling the internet and Facebook?)

My wife, too, appeared. I had lived with her many years and she had taught me comradeship, strife and resignation.

Our leaders strain every nerve, and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates…

Cub Lake Loop in Rocky Mountain National Park - RMNP has a permit system in place for the summer which means you have to reserve a timeslot to enter the park. I was only able to get the 5am-7am timeslot for Bear Canyon Road, but it turned out to be a great time to go even if it meant getting up at 4am. As I pulled into the Cub Lake trailhead parking lot, I saw a huge herd of elk along the Big Thompson River. It consisted of all females and their young calves which seemed to have been born fairly recently. I was the only one at the trailhead at the time (I was the 3rd car in the lot) and I just stood there and enjoyed this amazing scene for a long time. The mamas were crying out for their calves, the river was gushing, the wind was blowing a slight breeze and the sun was low in the sky to the east….what a great start. I made my way south on the Cub Lake trail for a bit with the sun to my left and then headed west along the Cub Lake drainage up towards the lake. Along the way I spotted a bull moose in a beautiful meadow. Unfortunately he was just leaving the meadow and entering the woods so I didn’t get a great photo, but that disappointment was relieved when I got to the lake and spotted a female moose in the water grazing on lily pads. I found myself a good spot far enough away not to bother her and took some video and photos. What a beautiful scene…this pristine mountain lake with this majestic animal…wow. After around 30 minutes of enjoying this scene, I headed up the trail towards the Fern Lake trail. I wasn’t able to turn left to Fern Lake due to closures from last season’s fires, so I headed right (east) along the Big Thompson River towards the Fern Lake trailhead. At the intersection I passed a group of firefighters headed up into the closed section to clear out burned and dead trees to make it safe for us hikers to enjoy once it opens up again. They were walking fast uphill, carrying chainsaws and other heavy tools. Those guys are in incredibly good shape, and I appreciate all that they do. The Fern Lake trail from this junction to the trailhead is a nice walk in the woods with a river by your side the whole way, but it didn’t have the expansive views of the Cub Lake trail. There were lots of burned-out areas along this trail and the smell of ash was pretty strong. Once I reached the trailhead I walked around three quarters of a mile along Fern Lake road to the Cub Lake trailhead and my car. By this time (around 9:30am) there were lots of cars and people along the road. This was a really nice loop hike of just over 6 miles, with great views and a really good wildlife day.

Huge herd of elk cows and calves with a great backdrop

Big Thompson River with elk far back

Sun rising over the river

Wildflowers with a view

There's a big bull moose in those trees, really...

Female moose checking me out

Moose in Cub Lake

Peaceful

She was tracking a big bull elk across the way

Cub Lake with moose at the edge

One of several closures due to last year's fires

More closures; saw firefighters heading up the trail here

Some of the fire damage

Elk cooling off in the Big Thompson

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – This is definitely NOT the book that the movie Black Swan was based on. That very strange movie was about ballet dancers. This book was about the impossibility of predicting rare but highly impactful events (like wars or 9/11 or the great recession). The title was taken from the story that for hundreds of years, the European world only knew that white swans existed. Then a black swan was reported in Australia and that shifted everyone’s perception. The book was a New York Times best seller and was elected one of the 12 most influential books since World War II by the Sunday Times of London.

I THINK I understand Taleb’s basic premise, which is that there are certain events in certain fields of study that cannot be predicted by either past history or mathematical models. And, in his opinion, anyone that tries to tell you otherwise is wrong and potentially harmful to your financial health.

Trying to understand his reasoning behind this and the possible mitigation of black swans is more difficult (at least it was for me). He has a very low opinion of economists that try to predict the price of oil in 10 years or financial planners that tell you your investments are perfectly safe in the stock market and will continue earning you increasing rates as long as you stick with their financial models. He’s a bit arrogant and dismissive of others, but he also seems to have the data to prove his point and he’s a big fan of Daniel Kahneman who wrote one of the more interesting books I’ve read this year called Thinking Fast and Slow. Most economists and financial planners probably hate Taleb (I think I’m gonna ask my financial planner if he’s read the book).

He divides the world into Mediocristan (where bell curves explain things and no major good or bad events occur) and Extremistan (where the bell curve is invalid and major good and bad events, or black swans, occur that were not predicted by anyone and have a huge impact).

I’m still thinking about the ideas in this book and I’ve yet to determine how to fit them into how I plan my life. Here’s an example from the book: What if an airline executive, before 9/11, had the idea to put locks on all cockpit doors. His idea likely would not have been implemented because pilots and manufacturers would say that the idea is not needed and is too costly and inconvenient. But it could have prevented 9/11. Of course, after the fact, all cockpits are locked. And then there is the American turkey – being fed every day for 1,000 days, and then one Thanksgiving, wham, its head is chopped off – Black Swan event for that turkey. Tough to plan for black swan events…..

Here are several interesting lines from the book:

This combination of low predictability and large impact makes the Black Swan a great puzzle…

Go ask your portfolio manager for his definition of “risk,” and odds are that he will supply you with a measure that excludes the possibility of the Black Swan – hence one that has no better predictive value for assessing the total risks than astrology.

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it.

…certain professionals, while believing they are experts, are in fact not. Based on their empirical record, they do not know more about their subject matter than the general population, but they are much better at narrating—or, worse at smoking you with complicated mathematical models. They are also more likely to wear a tie.

To summarize: in this (personal) essay, I stick my neck out and make a claim, against many of our habits of thought, that our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable (improbable according to our current knowledge)—and all the while we spend out time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.

It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag, a few speeches, and a national anthem….

About the Lebanese civil war: after close to thirteen centuries of remarkable ethnic coexistence, a Black Swan, coming out of nowhere, transformed the place from heaven to hell. A fierce civil war began between Christians and Moslems…

Today’s alliance between Christian fundamentalists and the Israeli lobby would certainly seem puzzling to a nineteenth-century intellectual—Christians used to be anti-Semites and Moslems were the protectors of the Jews, whom they preferred to Christians.

The Levant has been something of a mass producer of consequential events nobody saw coming.

History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture, with a few vibrations in between. Yet we (and historians) like to believe in the predictable, small incremental progression.

..you may think that radical Islam (and its values) are your allies against the threat of Communism, and so you may help them develop, until they send two planes into downtown Manhattan.

Death is often a good career move for an author.

The bankers led everyone, especially themselves, into believing that they were “conservative.” They are not conservative; just phenomenally skilled at self-deception by burying the possibility of a large, devastating loss under the rug.

Many people confuse the statement “almost all terrorists are Moslems” with “almost all Moslems are terrorists.” Assume that the first statement is true, that 99 percent of terrorists are Moslems. This would mean that only about .001 percent of Moslems are terrorists, since there are more than one billion Moslems and only, say, ten thousand terrorists, one in a hundred thousand….minorities in urban areas in the US have suffered from the same confusion: even if most criminals come from their ethnic subgroup, most of their ethnic subgroup are not criminals, but they still suffer from discrimination by people who should know better….a person can get very high scores on the SATs and still feel a chill of fear when someone from the wrong side of town steps into the elevator. This inability to automatically transfer knowledge and sophistication from one situation to another, or from theory to practice, is a quite disturbing attribute of human nature.

Once your mind is inhabited with a certain view of the world, you will tend to only consider instances proving you to be right. Paradoxically, the more information you have, the more justified you will feel in your views.

Terrorism kills, but the biggest killer remains the environment, responsible for close to 13 million deaths annually. But terrorism causes outrage, which makes us overestimate the likelihood of a potential terrorist attack – and react more violently to one when it happens.

The pool of starving actors is larger than the one of starving accountants, even if you assume that, on average, they earn the same income.

Around twenty-five hundred people were directly killed by bin Laden’s group in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center…But, according to researchers, during the remaining three months of the year, close to one thousand people died as silent victims of the terrorists. How? Those who were afraid of flying and switched to driving ran an increased risk of death. There was evidence of an increase of casualties on the road during that period; the road is considerably more lethal than the skies. These families…were also the victims of bin Laden.

Ralph Nader may be the American citizen who saved the highest number of lives by exposing the safety record of car companies. But in his political campaign a few years ago even he forgot to trumpet the tens of thousands of lives saved by his seat belt laws. It is much easier to sell “look what I did for you” than “look what I avoided for you.”

Listening to the news on the radio every hour is far worse for you than reading a weekly magazine, because the longer interval allows information to be filtered a bit.

Experts who tend to be experts: livestock judges, astronomers, test pilots, soil judges, chess masters, physicists, accountants, grain inspectors…Experts who tend to be not experts: stockbrokers, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, college admissions officers, court judges, councilors, personnel selectors…

The reason I felt immediately at home in America is precisely because American culture encourages the process of failure, unlike the cultures of Europe and Asia where failure is met with stigma and embarrassment. America’s specialty is to take these small risks for the rest of the world, which explains this country’s disproportionate share in innovations.

This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can’t know) is the central idea of uncertainty.

Of the five hundred largest US companies in 1957, only seventy-four were still part of that select group, the Standard and Poor’s 500, forty years later.

In the last fifty years, the ten most extreme days in the financial markets represent half the returns. Ten days in fifty years. Meanwhile, we are mired in chitchat.

I worry less about terrorism than about diabetes, less about matters people usually worry about because they are obvious worries, and more about matters that lie outside our consciousness and common discourse (I also have to confess that I do not worry a lot—I try to worry about matters I can do something about).

I am very aggressive when I can gain exposure to positive Black Swans—when a failure would be of small moment—and very conservative when I am under threat from a negative Black Swan.

So stop sweating the small stuff. Don’t be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth—remember that you are a Black Swan.

Skyscraper Reservoir near Eldora – A great June hike with my daughter and her wonder dog in the Indian Peaks Wilderness area. The trail starts at the very busy Hessie trailhead just outside the town of Eldora. On this weekday there were many cars parked along the road (on weekends there is a free shuttle that leaves from Eldora High School). Most of the day-hikers head to Lost Lake, about 2 miles from the trailhead. After the junction to Lost Lake we saw 4 people total.

Our initial goal was to get to Woodland Lake, but luckily we (really I) had enough energy to make it the extra third of a mile to Skyscraper, just at the tree line. That last third of a mile was above 11,000 feet and there were around 5 short snowfields we had to cross, making it a bit more of an adventure. The hike ended up at 10.7 miles and around 2,400 feet elevation gain. We didn’t see any big animals but saw lots of moose droppings and tracks. I think the animals here are bit leerier of humans than those in a national park. Both Woodland Lake and Skyscraper Reservoir are beautiful in their own way; Woodland is surrounded by pines, while Skyscraper is more barren and surrounded by snow capped peaks. I understand that both lakes are good for fishing but we were the only ones at the lakes on this day and we weren't fishing.

Long’s Gardens in Boulder shares a bit of the history of Skyscraper Reservoir. JD Long started the business in 1905 until his son Everett took over. In 1940 Everett and Anne Long honeymooned in this area scouting out a possible place to build a dam in order to provide constant water to their flower farm in Boulder. At the time, this lake was known as Upper Woodland Lake, but when they built the dam in the 1940s it was changed to Skyscraper Reservoir. Eventually the family switched to concentrating on the more drought tolerant Irises so the water from the reservoir was no longer needed. They sold the dam to the city of Boulder in the 1960s. It’s no longer maintained (as far as I know), and nature will eventually re-establish the original Upper Woodland Lake. When we were there, water was pouring through parts of the dam.