Camping With Google Earth

Last week I used Google Earth to scout sites for my 21 month-old daughter's first ever camping trip. The imagery of the Never Summer Range is excellent, and I quickly found a couple good candidates. We used one of them Saturday night: it's marked along with a hiking trailhead and the spot where our little mountaineer announced she was too tired and hungry to continue in camping-debut.kml.

One thing the imagery (2004? 2005?) doesn't show is how bad the mountain pine beetle epidemic is in that part of the Routt National Forest. The slope facing our campsite was up to 10% dead. We saw large stands that might have been 20% dead.