March 13, 2016. Dallas and I check out of the Motel 6 and drive back to Fairplay. The day is partly sunny with temperatures in the high twenties, Fahrenheit. I spot a group of three Pronghorns standing by the roadside. After picking up gear from our room at the Western Motel, Dallas and I hike on Sheep Mountain, off of Route 18 near Fairplay. It is one of the lesser mountains in the region, yet its summit is well above tree line. The unpaved road takes us through the valley of a Four Mile Creek, full of beaver dams and ponds. We park on the side of the access road of the Horseshoe Campground, don our snowshoes, and walk through the campground, looking of the Forest Road 691 trailhead. It is not where the map says it should be. We resort to hiking a long traverse, though two feet or more of unbroken show, a few hundred yards above the camp road. Our route eventually intersects the trail, which has seen enough recent traffic to be well-packed. The uphill grade is steady but mild enough to be easily manageable. The woods, mostly of conifer, are very pretty. We are hoping at least to get above tree line, but find the going to be slow and arduous. The higher we get, the less well packed is the snow. We post-hole if we stray even slightly off the trail and sometimes even while one it. While our hiking map shows two switchbacks between the campground and tree line, we ascend at least four and are still well short of it. The view of the land below the mountain and the distant mountains, seen through open spots along the trail, are very nice. We finally call it quits at a switchback that is open enough that we can see the rocky and treeless upper reaches of the mountain, across a deep ravine. The way back is quicker, but the problem of post-holing persists. We walked the trail all the way back to the campground, rather than to rejoin our traverse. The trailhead is actually a left off of the Limber Grove Trail, about one hundred yards from the camp loop road, and not on the loop road itself (as the map seemed to indicate).

We stop twice as we drive back to investigate beaver ponds along the road. I walk across one of the dams, which has a head of about a foot and a half. We spot numerous lodges as continue out drive back to Fairplay. The scenery of these high plains reminds us a lot of Iceland: a large, level, grassy expanse surrounded by distant snow-covered peaks.