Lonesome Lake Trail

This year we've been doing a lot of hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park so we decided to head west of Vail to Lonesome Lake for a new view. The drive isn't too bad until the last 8 miles when your smooth paved road switches to a bumpy gravel road. It's still not nearly as bad as the ride up to Gray's or the Fourth of July trailhead but definitely slows you down. One good thing about the location is that it's fairly isolated and not many people were around. There wasn't a parking lot and you could just park anywhere along the road. We didn't have any issues as we only saw 6 other people on the trail all day and they camped overnight by the lake.

The trail starts out with a steady uphill climb through the woods. You can hear the creek in the distance but there isn't much to see until you have to cross the creek. When we went the bridge was down but the water wasn't very high so it was a pretty easy crossing. After that, you continue through the woods a little more until you get to the valley.

The valley/meadow area is pretty cool overall as you get a good view of the mountains on each side and as you continue down the trail there are quite a few streams that go down the middle of it. For a while the trail is pretty flat and goes right beside the open area and other times you are walking on the side of the mountain more and it's harder to see down because of the trees. Overall this looks like an ideal spot for deer, moose, elk, etc. but we didn't see any.

After a few miles you then get away from the valley and start going uphill to the lake. It's not very steep but you can definitely tell it's uphill after your fairly flat walk the past few miles.

There are some pretty nice views looking back at the valley once you get at the top and you start to see some of the mountains up close. Below is a picture of Lonesome Lake from the other side of the trail.

Here's another picture of Ali flexing on a rock. Normally it's "sun's out, guns out" but she's normally cold so that won't happen much.

In total, the trail was around 11 miles after we walked around the lake with 1,932 elevation gain. It was a good change of pace to get away from everyone and have a very peaceful hike. The views were good but nothing amazing. If you wanted to do this trail, I'd go as early as you could and try to see some wildlife in the valley. That is probably the biggest upside to this trail.