East Portal snow hike & Frozen Dead Guy Days

April & I decided months ago that it's time to forge our own paths in life for the foreseeable future. It's a mutually positive decision and we both want to move ahead individually. We've had a lot of good treks together; this was something of an encore before she moves into her new apartment next weekend. As they say, it's all good.

We drove up past Rollinsville to the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel for a snow hike into the woods. We packed snowshoes but the trail was sufficiently packed to hike with our boots alone. The 6.2mi long Moffat Tunnel was completed in 1928 and allowed trains to pass beneath the Continental Divide; the trip was shortened from 4-8 hours to just 20 minutes via the tunnel, thus allowing safe, reliable and speedy passage to the West through Colorado. Today it's still used frequently by freight trains and the AMTRAK California Zephyr line.

There is access to lots of backcountry skiing and hiking from this area, although we were short on time and only hiked up to the west for about an hour before we had to turn back. Always nice to be out in the mountainous woods regardless.

Not far away in the town of Nederland was the annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, which we'd wanted to check out for the past several years but always somehow missed. The legend goes that there is an old Norweigan man who believed in cryogenics, and he is frozen in a shed awaiting the science to reanimate him when the time is right. Translation: a weird old man inspired a good ol' winter mountain party. They host a slew of events like Coffin Races, Frozen Turkey Bowling, a Hearse Parade and live music, beer garden, etc. The festival turned out to be less fun that we'd hoped, but at least we went.

Coffin Race course & spectators (and medical support)

heaving a frozen turkey towards snowy bowling pins

It was a good day, although in hind sight it would've been more rewarding to spend a full day hiking up somewhere more remote rather than milling around the festival. But alas, we went and experienced and that was good. Time to move on, anyway.