Subzero Alpine

Berthoud Pass, Colorado.

A group of us stayed in an old forest service hut for the weekend near the Berthoud Pass.

There are times in the high-country that make me wonder how anything lives up here.
Last Friday the wind-chill above timberline was well below zero and had been for a couple of days. Nothing moves when it is this cold, if it is not being throttled by the wind, it is still and frozen. I rarely see any wildlife on days like this, probably because it takes too much energy to move around in these conditions.
Besides the extreme cold, the flat light (note: the lack of shadows in the photo) make it very difficult to see the terrain. This makes traveling interesting. Our group of three found walking above timberline to be too brutal today. So we had to take less direct routes to our destination slopes. This means walking around peaks instead of over them, much more time and energy consuming. We did a few runs and called it a day.