In August you still find snowfields in the Snowy Range of Southern Wyoming. I found the Snowy Range – the Snowies -- in June taking a detour enroute to the American Society of Safety Engineers’ (ASSE) Safety 2017 national conference and expo in Denver. The Snowy Range runs through Medicine Bow National Forest, about 30 miles west of Laramie, Wyoming and 161 miles northwest of Denver. The closest town is Centennial, population 270, with one gas pump and one ATM.
Five years ago, after the ASSE Safety 2012, also in Denver, I detoured on the way home to hike the Badlands in South Dakota, where I wandered off a trail, lost my grip on crumbling sandstone, and fell head over heels down a small ravine. They had to chopper me out, wrapped in aluminum foil, to a hospital in Rapid City. My pelvis was broken two places and my bruised and swollen face looked like a Halloween mask.