The Sawatch Cowpoke

I tried to look past my headlamp in the very-early morning darkness, and in all honesty I couldn’t. Matt, Scott, and I had met in a parking lot only less than an hour before, three men on a mission to go to one of the most remote peaks in all of Rocky Mountain National Park. By the end of today, with a little luck and a whole lot of skill and toughness, we would summit Hayden Spire. Laying on a ridgeline extending from Sprague Peak and off of the western side of Stones Mountain lays a massive crater-like formation of rock and cliffside. Along that cliffside sits a series of huge spires above Hayden Lake, one of many year-round pockets of glaciated lake that sits quiet among the high peaks in the park. Hayden Spire is easily seen from Trail-Ridge Road, and the Forest Canyon Overlook, but never easily reached by any sort of insertion point into the park. On this particular morning, we had chosen to take the overland approach route to the spire from the Bear Lake Trailhead. This

  In all honesty I do not know why his goofy face crossed my mind the other day but it did. Being here in the Rockies among the high peaks and the wide open and deep wilderness, I can’t help but think that he would love to run and play here, and probably trip over something. I was young when we first got him. My first best friend. Tanner was a first-generation Goldendoodle, the cross between a male Golden Retriever and a poodle. His hair was a dark ginger as a puppy, with a slight wave as it spread over the hunches of his shoulders and onto his back. His hair was never curly, but it was never really straight either. As he grew older into adulthood, his hair took a lighter hue of yellow, matching the same colors as a purebred adult Golden Retriever male. He was the best dog that I had ever had. He was the best dog that I had ever met either, even to this day. There are some days when I honestly really do wonder if he truly had the soul of a dog at all, or if he was something a litt