This year we made another trip to the Mt Zirkle Wilderness. For years, Ted had been talking about making a trip to Red Canyon, so this year we did it. I decided to take the train and Ted picked me up in Denver at Union Station. ,I did this for several reasons. One was that I have always liked trains taking them several times to Michigan and up north to Seattle or Portland. Two, my car is getting old with almost 130K miles on it. And third, the California Zephyr takes a new route that I had never been on. In the old days, the train actually went through Laramie and then backed down to Denver, Now it goes through several gorges as it travels along the Colorado River to the Rockies. One interesting feature was all the rafters and boaters who exposed various portions of their anatomy such as breasts or buttocks. I got tired of it, and since I had a sleeper, flashed them whenever they flashed the train.

We rendezvoused with Jim in Laramie and headed off to the trail head the next day. Ted's Tacoma proved itself a worthy vehicle as it went over some treacherous portions of the road. It was a short hike with nice views of farmland and cows. Once we reached the wilderness area, we could see that it had been ravaged by fire..

We found a nice place to put up our tents/megamids since there was absolutely no shade. We also had rain the first half of the trip so it was good we had shelter. Jim's food bag was huge, so we had plenty to snack on while Jim and Ted played cribbage, a most arcane game. We noticed a bunch of ticks in the area also.

We did a short hike up the trail eventually running into heavy brush and headed back. Then we found more evidence of Wood Demons. The next day we had sunny weather and did a short day hike down the trail and spotted two big horn sheep, one a female who followed the male. In our search for good tasty food, we tried to make falafels. We used a package dried garbanzo mix, moistened in water and fried. It actually was not too bad, but not great.

The next day we hiked out and took a short walk down the road to see what was there. We successfully made the harrowing drive back down to Laramie and parted the next day.

The Mount Zirkel Wilderness lies within the Routt National Forest in northwestern Colorado. It was one of the original areas protected under the 1964 Wilderness Act and has since been expanded twice to its present size of 160,648 acres. This Wilderness area is home to the headwaters of the Elk, Encampment and North Platte Rivers. It straddles the Continental Divide and encompasses the rugged Sawtooth Range, as well as portions of the Park and Sierra Madre ranges.

The Wilderness is named after Mount Zirkel (12180 ft), the highest peak in the Park range. Clarence King, one of the leaders of the Fortieth Parallel Survey named it after German geologist Ferdinand Zirkel (1838-1912), a pioneer in the study of the optical characteristics of thin slices of rock under a microscope (petrography).

The purpose of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (1867 to 1872; "Fortieth Parallel Survey") was to study and describe the natural resources within a 100 mile border around the Union and Central Pacific railroads from northeastern California, through Nevada, to eastern Wyoming. The comprehensive survey, under the direction of A. A. Humphreys (military general) and Clarence King (geologist), mapped the area along 40th parallel (they couldnt name it "whats right next to the railroads that we can mine, harvest, or shoot" could they?), studying the geology, looking for gold deposits, and collecting plants and animals.

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