Mount Democrat #11 August 12, 2007

We drove up to Mount Democrat on Saturday night before our hike, planning to camp as usual. We knew that the Perseid Meteor showers were supposed to be happening that night, and what better place to view them then in a nice, dark valley between some mountains?

The nighttime sky was truly breathtaking. Around 11PM we looked skyward and were so amazed. The stars themselves were stunning, but there was also lightning flashes from off in the distance that lit the sky up a little bit here and there. There were no specific sources of light, there was just this flashing. Also, the Milky Way was more visible than I had ever seen it before. It spanned the entire length of the sky and appeared as if it was a cloud, but it didn't change. It's enormous and really makes one feel very tiny in relation to the universe.

Apparently we were early for the meteor shower (the best show is tonight, the 12th) but we still saw a few meteors and they weren't disappointing. They shot clear across the sky at lightning speed and had large tails on them. The tails reminded me of the fireworks that rain down in an umbrella shape with thick sparkly tails. These were much better though. We also saw many satellites in the sky and spent quite a bit of time in awe of the 'show' going on.

Eventually some clouds rolled in and closed up our view to a small window of some of the brighter stars. We took that as our cue to hit the hay. The next morning we planned to hike three mountains!

Well, the next morning came and we hit the snooze button about oh, 10 times. When we finally rolled out of car (bed), it was almost 8:30 -- well past the time you should be leaving to hike any mountain. We were just in the mood to take it easy though, so we had our leisurely breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and energy drinks. Yum.

It was obvious that we weren't that motivated though and as we walked to the trailhead we almost decided to just forego this trip and come back at another time when we were more into it. However, we decided that guilt we would feel driving out would outweigh any feelings of relaxation at not hiking, so we kept going.

The hike was very similar to Mount Sherman, and we made it up the mountain in record time: two hours. There was the typical steep parts, the typical loose rock, the little rodents and birds, the huffing and puffing...but it was still very lovely. When we reached the summit of Democrat, we still fully intended to hike the remaining three (we found out there was an additional summit up there). So we headed back down to where you turn to summit those, and when we reached the fork in the road we justified our heading down the fork towards camp by saying we would come back when we had more time and more motivation.

So hence, this wasn't our last hike of the season after all. We plan to go back to summit Cameron, Lincoln and Bross in early September. We are hoping the snow will wait to arrive until later that month.

The most spectacular parts of this hike I believe were the nighttime sky and meteor shower, and the two rainbows that we saw in two days. One on our way to the campground and one on our way home. I love Colorado!