I hadn't planned on taking this road. When last I was here, ten days ago, you could look up and see the continuous huge snowbank along the divide.

The road over the top, across the Continental Divide, was still drifted shut.

But this morning, as I blew past the turnoff at least twenty minutes later than I had planned, it occurred to me...

If I could drive over the top, that'd make up those twenty minutes, if not more. So I stopped and glassed the Divide, the snow drifts just tinged with the pink of sunrise.

There was a thin brown line through the white.

The road was open. At least, the snow was off that ridgeline. Maybe thick with mud, but at least it was worth the gamble.

Especially when I'm already running late. It's hard to get up at four when you didn't get to bed until one thirty.

Up I went.

It was open.

And yes, I'm sitting on the actual Continental Divide here. About 8300'. Still some huge snowbanks left.

Even more on that other part of the Divide on the far left. And yes, those faint mountains barely visible on the right?

That's a whole other state.

Hard to believe, but I was still checking strutting grounds this morning. Conventional wisdom used to assume strutting ended at the end of April.

A reasonable assumption, perhaps, when you always study leks in low elevation, easy-to-reach places. But here in the high country, we've found sage grouse strutting well into May.

You just have to go out and look. Apparently nobody else did.

Ten days ago I still couldn't reach some strutting grounds because of huge snow drifts.

Today I could.

And found grouse still strutting on three of the four leks I checked. Not very many, true. And not vigorously. But they were there, and they were strutting.

The thing I noticed?

They weren't terribly bright. I'm not sure if they're losing their white breast feathers, or wearing them down. Or if they're just plain dirty.

But they didn't shine. In fact, they looked kinda dingy.

Like most of the grouse, I think I'm done.

For this year.