Purgatory Flats via Cascade Creek Trail

Author's Comments

The trail starts unassumingly, just off the highway near the resort, and for the first mile or so you wonder if this is going to be one of those hikes where the destination has to do all the work. Then the spruce closes in. The forest here is old in a way that registers slowly, the understory dim and damp, the trunks furred with lichen. You walk for a long time inside that green light. The flats arrive without ceremony. The trees thin, the ground levels, and suddenly you are standing at the edge of a meadow that goes on longer than seems reasonable, the Animas moving through it slow and clear, and the peaks of the Weminuche rising on every side. In July the wildflowers are doing what wildflowers do at ten thousand feet, which is to say everything at once, and the foreground compositions almost build themselves. I came in early on a Tuesday morning in late July and saw two people the entire day. The light at that hour comes in low across the meadow and rakes the grass sideways, and the river takes the sky and gives it back doubled. The footbridge is worth lingering on. So is the far edge of the flats, where the meadow narrows back into forest and the peaks frame up cleanly behind a bend in the water. Five miles is enough to keep most people away, which is the quiet bargain this place offers. Bring a wide lens for the valley and something longer for the ridgelines. Bring time. The walk back is the same five miles, and you will want to stop more than you did on the way in.

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