Nathan

It is time for some new adventures from the Hoff and crew!

As Jasper told us already last time, Monday 30^th of May we reached the back country of Crawford, where I could just avoid a pillow thrown at me while I slept on a brick that night. The following day we woke up early for a long day hike along a cone-shaped mountain. Finally mountains again after a month of canyons. In the idyllic morning sun we witnessed some deer and elk bouncing through just awoken alpine meadows with snow-white mountain peaks in the background.

This perfect image couldn’t last long of course. The first river we had to cross was so wild and grown in size due to melted snow we first cried for a while before setting on a search for a crossable tree trunk. After Sander had found one, we managed to get to the other site and continue our journey. A couple of miles further up a second, smaller but still quite wild creek met up with us. After taking the shoes of again, walk over some trunks, dry our feet and put our shoes back on we continued through the muddy trail. Eventually we met our Waterloo in, yes, the good old snow again. After having lunch, building dams in a small stream and drying of Sanders foot (he almost fell in a creek) we hiked a bit around at lower elevation before heading back. After Jasper threw his shoe in one of the fast streaming creeks, the shoe was saved some hectometers further downstream, we finally reached the Hoff again, battered and bruised and full of images of bouncing deers in morning meadows.

Wednesday Paonia was our target, where we managed to get a hike from the Forest Service. A hike, they said, which was do-able and not very snowy. We planned this hike for Thursday and did some groceries, wifi-ed at the public library and I got a involuntary shower during the refilling of our water tank. We tried to camp near the trailhead, which was reachable by a four wheel drive road. The Hoff got through it but for the second time in a week he moaned about not being build for that kinda stuff. The following day we started to hike to the peak of a mountain with the intention of camping up there. But again, after finding the real trailhead at noon and struggling with over enthusiastic creeks, we found snow blocking our way. So the only option was head back to the Hoff again.

Finally the conclusion came to us; hiking in the higher mountain regions of Colorado was impossible. A roadtrip through these beautiful mountains was the only alternative. Friday we drove to Glenwood springs for skyping and asking for more trails at the forest service (which failed because the ranger was lazy and gave us rubbish). Saturday we drove to Aspen, over a pass of 3687 meters high (Go Hoff!) through walls of snow and a bunch of skieers and further through the mountains to Nederland, a small mountain village / hippie town near Boulder (which is near Denver). People there were flabbergasted by the fact that three young dudes in a van didnt some weed!

The piece de la resistance came near Boulder, where we parked at a Walmart for the night. After walking to a nice mall for a Subway (the area of Boulder is very Yupping) we came back at the Hoff. Next to us was another van with a guy who wanted a nice chat with us. Though the guy was already a bit drunk. He came from Oklahoma and was a guy of the 'fast money', hedgefunds and stuff. Though now he lived in a van. After 30 minutes, his speech about the world economic situation and banking system was finished, after which he started to orate about capitalism and how the States should be managed. 15 minutes later we managed to get the first words in, we were still entertained at that moment, and drank a beer together on the Walmart parking lot. After more gibberish about oil, economics and politics he came up with a conspiracy by the big bank dudes who are trying to destroy the middle class worldwide. This was accompanied by a strong historical background lecture of the monetary history of the dollar and British pound. In between all these lectures and theories we tried to get the subject changed into climbing mountains, cause that is what the guy (Nathan was his name) did when he made enough money. But immediately the subject changed again and his monolog continued. At this moment we were getting a bit tired, so we decided one of us listened and the other two just continued with our van-bound life, switching roles. A couple of interesting (uhm...) subjects and theories came from this drunken man. He could have been 10 million dollars worth but now he wasn’t, he had to get his life back on track. Even more hilarious was when he started to preach like a American Native (cause apparently he was also partially Native..), talking about all what was build and it didnt matter as it would be gone in 100 years, talking about how to change the world and stuff.

Finally, after listening (or better, pretending to listen) for 2 hours he stopped and went to the bar to get himself hammered (even more hammered?, we thought) but not before he slammed his door shut for 5 times as it wouldn't close, meanwhile busying the already legendary words of: “Close, you stupid American product!”. Too bad this process of handling his van took place 3 times that night, the first around sunrise when he came back from the bar. This guy made a real deep impact on us so many quotes of Oklahoma Nathan will be busied by us during this trip and the years to come.

Sunday was a hot day in Boulder. As Boulder is a Yup-town, thus rich, Boulder has a very large area of the front range turned into a hiking park. Though it was extremely busy at the parking lot, in the park itself it wasn’t so bad and we climbed to Bear Peak, a very nice hike! Only at the top thousand of small flies came and sit on every visitor, which made the view a bit less nice and we quickly descended from the mountain. Totally cooked we arrived at the Hoff, went to McDonalds for some sprite and bathed in a nice cold mountain river near our new camp spot (no Nathan-like people around) in between Boulder and Nederland.