Snow

I awoke this morning to a layer of fresh snow reflecting the rising sun in through the bedroom window.  I wasn't really expecting that.  Jocelyn, with her SoCal roots, sees this sort of thing and rolls over in bed.  (Not that this makes Jocelyn a wimp.  She's actually one of the more consistently tough runners I've known. In shape or not, Jocelyn knows how to suffer.  This can't be said of a lot of (very fast) runners; I think she's probably just secure in the level of toughness in her constitution and doesn't feel the need to validate it to herself all the time with silly macho gambits like running in all kinds of terrible weather.  Like I apparently tend to need to...) 

I, on the other hand, grunt and groan, kick around the apartment for a couple minutes and prepare to run.  As I put my shirt on, Jocelyn comments that I'm getting too skinny.  Where did those hip bones come from?  Why are there ribs in your back? she asks.  Jocelyn always lets me know when I'm finally getting fit.

(Late season frosty Flatirons.)

The snow actually lended a playful aspect to the run this morning as I danced up and down Green Mountain with a little extra cushion on the path.  I imagined this to be one of the last few crystalline window-dressings of this type, so I was sure to bring the camera along and snap a couple of pictures.
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(Looking back down Gregory Canyon towards Chautauqua and Boulder.)

For the past couple of weeks, I've definitely had a paradoxical relationship with my feelings toward continued snowfall.  The alpine hydrologist in me and my interests in water resources all know that Spring-time snows in the Rockies are essential to securing a healthy snowpack, which the Front Range and most of the western United States relies on for its water, via the Colorado River, specifically.

(Stairway to heaven: above the 4-way junction on Green Mt.)

However, the mountain runner in me selfishly wishes that the blasted snowpack was gone yesterday.  I want trail X and secret path Y to be melted out now because I've been slipping and sliding through the white stuff since October and I'm tired of carrying Microspikes in my waistband and dulling them on the rocks that are now poking through and I'm tired of having to plan my long-run routes with postholing and bullet-proof ice in mind and I'm tired of gloves and I'm tired of shirts.  Bring on summer and tan lines and double-fisting water bottles and S-caps!

(Green Mt as seen while descending the Greenman trail.)

Nevertheless, obviously, there is a nexus in my interests and personality where the environmentalist/hydrologist  and the mountain runner are actually one and the same.  I wouldn't be the environmentalist I am if I weren't a mountain runner and vice versa.  So, let it snow.