Silly Things Happened on an Opal Lake Hike
A few years ago, I belonged to a local Pagosa Springs club called The Grey Wolves. The group was a hiking and skiing group and is still operating to this day. On one trip to Opal Lake, a couple of silly things happened to me on this 5.1 miles round trip.
The group of eighteen persons hiked through the woods, walked gingerly over a log then gathered at the edge of Opal lake. After observing the milky water, the next destination point was an overlook about a mile or so where the group would eat their lunches. On the way up to the ridge we passed through a vast meadow. Gorgeous stands of aspens and evergreens flanked the grassy area. There was a trench about fourteen inches deep on part of the path which a herd of cows had used frequently to go wherever cows like to go. We made it to the ridge, ate our lunches than headed back down the trail.
The group was spread out quite a bit. Slower ones were way behind; faster people were breaking speed records to get back to the parking lot. I was in the middle. A fellow hiker, Jerry was ahead of me. One hazard of hiking is when one is trying to take in all of the beauty, it is likely that they will trip over a tree root or rock because they are not looking down at the path. Such is what happened to me when I was walking in the trench that the cows made. I stumbled over a rock and fell into the sunken path and got stuck sideways, backpack and all. (I was stuck in a rut!) Thankfully, fellow hiker Jerry pulled me out of it.
But wait there’s more. We made our way down the trail and up ahead I saw a couple of fellows not in our hiking group. We were walking through an area where there was some oak brush off to the left. Suddenly, a hunting dog of some type burst out of the brush startling me. I screamed. My scream startled Jerry causing him to jump. The dog ran behind me, rubbing against the back of my legs as it did, then on ahead to it’s master. It was all rather peculiar. I’ve been on several hikes to different places, but they were usually uneventful. Sometimes things just happen.
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