My Summer Skin at 10,000 Feet — The Ritual That Keeps It Beautiful

I want to tell you something about the town I live in.

Victor, Colorado sits at just under 10,000 feet above sea level in the Teller County mountains — a small gold mining town that had its heyday at the turn of the twentieth century and has been quietly, stubbornly itself ever since. The main business streets are paved. Everything else is dirt. The winters are long and genuinely cold. And the summers — the short, brilliant, socially abundant summers that everyone who lives here spends most of the year looking forward to — are extraordinary in ways that have nothing to do with skincare and everything to do with it.

At this altitude, the UV radiation that reaches the skin is significantly more intense than at sea level. The atmosphere is thinner. The natural filter that lower elevations provide is reduced. I can be outside in Victor for approximately ten minutes without sunscreen before I burn — not the gradual pinking of a fair-skinned person at the beach, but the rapid, high-altitude burn that anyone who has spent time in the Colorado mountains knows immediately. Our humidity levels average around forty percent and drop into single digits during dry spells. The air is actively pulling moisture from your skin at almost every moment of every day.

And then there is summer itself — the social, outdoor, fully-lived summer of a small rural community that has been cooped up since October. More time outside. More sun exposure. More activity. And, honestly, more of everything that comes with a short and celebrated season in a place that earns its summers: more evenings on the porch, more gatherings, more of the particular dehydration that comes with altitude, heat, and the occasional can of beer at a neighbor's barbecue.

This is what my summer skin is managing. And after eleven years of making botanical skincare in Colorado, at high altitude — I have found exactly the five products that let me live that summer fully without my skin paying the full price for it.

This is my summer ritual. And this July, I want to share it with you.

What Summer Does to My Skin

Before I tell you about the products, I want to describe what summer actually does to my skin — because I think it will sound familiar to more of you than just those living at altitude.

My skin is always dry. The Colorado air ensures that regardless of the season. But in summer the quality of that dryness changes in a specific way. The texture shifts — it becomes rougher, redder, with a weathered quality that is different from the smooth, tight dryness of winter. Small bumps appear along the corners of my mouth and down toward my jawline — not breakouts exactly, but under-skin congestion that the combination of heat, dust, and sunscreen creates in my pores. The redness that is always somewhat present at altitude intensifies. And the skin that my winter and spring ritual keeps relatively calm begins to feel as though it is working harder just to maintain its equilibrium.

This is the skin that my summer ritual is designed for. Not the idealized complexion of a skincare advertisement. My actual skin, in my actual town, in the actual conditions that a Colorado mountain summer creates every year.

The Morning — Light, Refreshing, Protective

My morning ritual in summer has a particular feeling that I have come to associate entirely with the season. It feels light and refreshing even in the heat. And it feels — this is the most important thing — like I am protecting my skin for the day ahead.

I begin with the Geranium Skin Tonic.

The Geranium Skin Tonic is not, in my routine, primarily an acne product — though it was when I first formulated it for my own skin eleven years ago. In summer it is my texture product. The nineteen botanical hydrosols that make up its formula do something remarkable for skin that has been roughened and reddened by altitude UV and dry mountain air: they smooth. The surface quality of my skin after the Skin Tonic is measurably different from what it was before — less rough, less red, the tiny under-skin bumps along my jaw beginning to clear with consistent morning use.

This is what nineteen botanical hydrosols do that a single-ingredient toner never can. Each one is contributing something specific — the clarifying work of Tea Tree and Garlic, the brightening of Lemon, the gentle toning of Witch Hazel, the balancing of Geranium — and the cumulative effect of all nineteen working together on skin that has been weathered by altitude is something I find genuinely extraordinary even after eleven years of applying this formula every morning.

The Lavender Vanishing Cream follows immediately.

This is the product that might surprise you most in a summer set — a Lavender Collection product layered over a Geranium Skin Tonic, two different collections working together on the same skin in the same morning step. The reason is simple once you understand what the Lavender Vanishing Cream does for my skin specifically in summer: it heals.

The Moringa Oil in the Lavender Vanishing Cream addresses sun damage and irritation with a speed that I have not found in any other product I have ever used. Applied in the morning over the Geranium Skin Tonic, it begins working on any redness or irritation from the previous day's sun exposure before I have left the house. It feels genuinely cooling on skin that is already managing the warmth of a Colorado summer morning. And it creates the same invisible, matte, all-day protective film that the Vanishing Cream has always created — sitting on my skin throughout the day, protecting the moisture barrier against the UV and dry air that Victor delivers in abundance, calming any reactive response that yesterday's sun managed to trigger.

The morning is complete in two steps. The skin feels light. The skin feels protected. The day ahead can do what it does — and I can do what I do in it — with confidence.

Once or twice a week, I add the Dead Sea Mud Mask Detoxifying. A weekly deep reset that exfoliates the dead skin that altitude and dry air produce, deep cleans the pores of the accumulated dust and sunscreen that even thorough daily cleansing cannot fully address over a week of active summer living, and clears the under-skin bumps that consistent use keeps away all season. Ten minutes. One to two times per week. The weekly step that makes everything else work better.

The Summer Day in Between

Between my morning ritual and my evening one, Victor delivers what it always delivers in summer.

Sunscreen applied under the Lavender Vanishing Cream. Hours outside in UV that burns faster than anywhere I have ever been at lower elevation. The particular fine dust that rises from unpaved roads on dry summer days and settles on everything — including skin — with a persistence that only people who live on dirt roads fully understand. Sweat. Heat. The accumulation of a full, outdoor, genuinely lived summer day at almost 10,000 feet.

Once or twice a week — usually on a Sunday morning before the day begins — the Dead Sea Mud Mask Detoxifying is slated in between my Geranium Skin Tonic and Lavender Vanishing Cream.

This is the deep reset that the daily ritual cannot reach. The mask exfoliates gently, removing the dead skin cells that altitude UV and dry air produce faster than at lower elevations. It deep cleans the pores of the accumulated sunscreen, sweat, and dust that even the Geranium Cold Cream's thorough evening removal cannot fully address over the course of a week of active Colorado summer living. And it clears the under-skin bumps along my jaw that the daily ritual keeps at bay — the mask is the reason they stay clear all summer rather than accumulating into something more visible and more persistent.

Ten minutes. One to two times per week. The weekly act of deep care that makes the daily ritual more effective.

The Evening — Cleansing, Restoring, Feeding Back

My evening ritual in summer has an entirely different quality from the morning one. Where the morning feels light and protective, the evening feels deeply cleansing. It feels like I am removing all of my summer day — everything Victor delivered to my skin in the hours since morning — and feeding my skin back what it needs to repair overnight.

The Geranium Cold Cream is the first step.

The oil phase of the Cold Cream dissolves everything the day placed on my skin — the sunscreen, the oxidized sebum, the fine dust from unpaved roads, the sweat of an active summer day — with the effortless thoroughness that only an oil-based cleanser achieves. I use the double cleanse approach: a generous first pass to remove everything visible, a smaller second pass on freshly cleansed skin to reach the deeper residue that the first pass lifts but does not fully remove. Removed with a warm cloth. What remains is patted in gently.

The Geranium Cold Cream's evening work mirrors the morning Tonic's — smoothing the skin's texture, addressing the redness and roughness that a day in the Colorado sun produces, and clearing any new congestion before it can establish itself overnight. The bookend logic of the set is deliberate: the Geranium products open and close the day doing the same clarifying, smoothing, and balancing work, while the Lavender Vanishing Cream sits in the middle healing what the sun does between them.

Then the Overnight Cream. Always the Overnight Cream.

My skin is too dry for the Cold Cream residue alone to be sufficient overnight — at this altitude, in this air, with the moisture loss that Colorado ensures through every season, I need one more layer of botanical nourishment before sleep. The Overnight Cream provides it: deeply moisturizing without heaviness, its healing oils addressing the hyperpigmentation that altitude UV accumulates on my skin, treating any sunburn or sun stress from the day with the same quiet botanical care that has made it the product I reach for most consistently across all eleven years of making this collection.

In the morning, the Geranium Skin Tonic meets skin that has had a full night of genuine restoration. Light again. Refreshed. Ready to be protected for another summer day.

This is the ritual. Five products. Two moments of intentional care — one for the morning, one for the evening — with a weekly deep treatment that makes both more effective.

After three summers at almost 10,000 feet, this is what I know: the right botanical ritual does not just protect skin from what summer does. It makes it possible to live summer fully — every dusty road, every outdoor gathering, every ten minutes past the point where sunscreen would have been the wiser choice — and come back to your vanity in the evening and give your skin exactly what it needs to be beautiful tomorrow.

The Limited Edition Summer Beauty Set is that ritual. Everything I use, in the sizes you need, for the summer your skin deserves.

Discover the Limited Edition Summer Beauty Set

New to vintage-inspired skincare? Read our guide: How to Use Your Beauty Set