Red Deer Lake

Drive & Parking
It'll take a little under 1.5 hours from Denver to get to the trail head assuming you leave early enough to get past Boulder traffic. Once you turn west into the mountains you are on some very curvy two lane roads with a lot of bikers so there is a chance this can slow you down quite a bit.

The last portion and a small middle section of the trip is on a gravel road but they are very well maintained compared to most. The parking lot is a decent size but there are a lot of campgrounds nearby so you'll need an early start if you want any seclusion.

Distance
~14 miles even though we were stupid and went a little over 17

Elevation
Should be around 2,000 but yet again, we were kinda stupid and got lost and did ~2,500. Below is a quick screenshot from my Garmin that shows we blew past the Red Deer Lake turnoff and did a portion of Buchanan Pass Trail

Difficulty
The length in general would make this a fairly difficult trail. There are no technical portions but quite a few sections that are fairly steep. Some of the areas were fairly flooded so we had to share the trail with a lot of water and perform some rock hopping in places. This will vary quite a bit depending on when you go.

The Hike
Like a lot of other hikes this year, it's a steady climb up that follows the Middle Saint Vrain Creek. The creek is very pretty and there are a few waterfall areas that a lot of people walk to that aren't too far from the trail head.

Once you cross the creek, you start to get some better views of the mountains around you, which are very steep.

You'll then go through a slightly more wooded area and then have a turnoff to go to the lake to your right. Unfortunately the trail marker was down and it wasn't easy to see so we blew right past it and ended up going to the Buchanan Pass Trail for quite a while. Even though it was tiring, the pass was very pretty with some rolling mountain views. Most importantly, as we were turning around to go back, Ali spotted a baby and momma moose about 20 yards from us. It's hard to see in the picture below but you can see the baby to the right. Btw, Ali was very very excited about this!

As we made our way back down, we saw the portion of the trail that went to Red Deer Lake and took that. This is ~1 mile or so from the main trail and is a solid uphill portion for the majority of it. However, the lake was very pretty and worth the hike up.

Even though it's a long trail, we loved the combination of creeks, lakes, and mountain views. Plus, any time we see a moose it always bumps up the trail quite a bit in our book.