Since it is getting colder and snowy in the mountains we didn't want to go too far in so opted on Crater Lakes Trail. This trail is located near Nederland, CO and it takes about 1 hr. 15 min to get there. Overall it's a fairly easy route with the last few miles being on a gravel road but it was in pretty good condition.
The first part of the hike is a moderate uphill climb through the forest with a creek on your left hand side for quite a while. You get a few random views of the mountain range in the distance during the clearing but overall the trail is mainly looking at trees. When we hiked it, there were a few inches of snow on the ground and the creek towards the top didn't have any water running so there wasn't much to see. I think this would be a lot nicer during the Spring when the water is flowing.
The two lower lakes are pretty nice but nothing special. We hiked around them and took some pictures as you can see below.
After seeing those lakes, we headed back and took the Forest Lake Trail branch. This was another 2.1 miles and is very similar to Crater Lakes in that it's a steady uphill with primarily tree views. Below is a picture of it.
By the end of the day we hiked a little over 10 miles with around 2,000 elevation gain. It was nice to get out but there was definitely nothing special about these hikes compared to other ones in the area.
