Setting off before first light, plodding upwards, I thought about the rattlesnakes I’d seen here last fall. They’d spent the winter tucked within the talus, just as I was experiencing a hibernation of my own – daydreaming and planning for spring. A Chukar interrupted my wandering mind when she flushed from some rabbitbrush next to my feet. I kept my head down and chipped away at the 500m I needed to gain before the sun came up…