Yesterday I hiked up Mount Audubon, 13,223' with Rich and Kelly. We had planned on also hiking up Paiute Peak, 13,088' but we didn't make it up Paiute. The trail up Audubon is pretty easy until you get to about 12,750' at which the nicely maintained trail becomes a scramble up small boulders and talus. There are nice views of the southern face of Longs Peak, as well as numerous other peaks in all directions. Off to the east the eastern plains can be seem. There were lots of people on the trail, and once we summitted there was probably about 20 to 30 people up there. While all of the other people headed back the way we came up, we headed off to the west to the saddle between Audubon and Paitue. The elevation of this saddle is between 12,500' and 12,750. There is no trail, just hiking across the rocks. Once we got to the saddle we assessed the weather and decided that it didn't look good enough to continue on, so we headed down a steep, loose rock chute. One of us would head down, find a place to stop and hide from any dislodged rocks and then the next person would come down, and we repeated 5 or 6 times before we got down to a beautiful little unnamed lake in a high alpine basin. At this point the rain started, as did some distant thunder. We still weren't at a trail so we scrambled along a creek, through some willows, and over rain slick rocks. For a short while we hung out next to a rock face to get out of the hail and to hopefully avoid the lightning that appeared to be close, but not overhead. I'm not afraid of too many things while out hiking, but lightning is the one thing that has me the most concerned about. The lightning seemed to yet up some, so we headed further down and eventually found a trail so at this point we started making better time and quickly got down low enough that we were amongst the trees, but that is also the time the storm had passed us by and the sun tried to make it's appearance again.

We probably covered about 10 miles. While coming down the chute I stepped onto a rock that started to move on me, which caused me to come down with all my weight on my left big toe. At that moment I know I did something to my toe, but I've come to think I broke it. While it isn't exactly bruised, it certainly is discolored. It hurts to move it or if I stub it or bang it into something, and generally aches all the time. It doesn't really appear to be swollen however. I suspect I'll be not hiking for awhile until it feels better, which I hope is rather quickly.