With it being the 4th of July, living in a vacation destination can be a bit overwhelming come holidays. Its good for the town, but I prefer the quiet solidarity of the mountains. When such days come, I go. This time I went for a 8+ hour jaunt with a very close friend of mine up White Mountain (13,401 ft). A good portion our day was spent well above treeline between 12,500' - 13,400'. We took the bus which was shuttling runners to the start of the Gothic to CB 1/3 Marathon, watched the race start, then took off for the Deer Creek Tr. In all we covered just 15 miles, but put in over 5,000' vert and got to see 300 +/- elk. A very good day in the hills. Oh.. and we didn't see a single person.
We tried to avoid them, but all it took was one to catch a glimpse of us and the entire herd started to move.