Crater Lakes Trail via Moffat Tunnel

We've taken a few week break on hiking due to bad weather, trips, etc. but this week we wanted to get one in before it got too snowy in the mountains. As I'm typing this, Denver is getting our first snowfall of the year. We're about 3" in so far and it's still coming down! Anyway, to the hike.

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.

Camping at Chambers Lake

This Labor Day weekend Ali and I decided to get a little camping in before it got too cold. We've been doing a lot of hiking in Estes and off of I-70 so for this trip we decided to go north of Estes Park to Chambers Lake. It took about 3 hours to get there from Denver with the last hour or so being a pretty drive but annoying when you get behind a slow vehicle.

Our actual campsite was about a 10 min walk from the lake and was pretty nice overall. Our inner pyromaniacs got to come out since there were quite a few dead trees and we had unlimited firewood! This site had two bathrooms and water about 2 min away so it was pretty convenient. Below is a pretty nice picture of Chambers Lake.

Blue Lake Trail
Our first trail was very close to our campsite. You could actually hike from the site but we drive about 3 min down the road and started at the actual trailhead. According to AllTrails, it's a 11.1 mile hike with around 2,250 elevation gain. This is only to the lake and you can continue to go past it if you want. By the time we hit the top of the ridge we ended up doing around 13 miles.

The first part of the trail is your typical forest trail where you can't see a whole lot and you steadily go uphill. There is one pretty view of Chambers Lake along the way and you pass some creeks which are pretty. Once you come to the lake, it opens up quite a bit and the views are pretty nice. The first picture below is our hardworking dog right before we hit the lake.

The next picture is a little ways behind the lake going up the ridge followed by a closeup of it.

Overall it was a pretty trail and I'd definitely do it again.

Camp Lakes, Rawah Lakes, and Twin Crater Lakes Loop

The next day I had an ambitious goal of doing a 24 mile loop that hits a lot of different lakes. This is normally a 2 - 3 day backpack trip if you really wanted to see everything but I had faith in us! From our campsite it was about a 10 min drive down a bumpy gravel road but wasn't too bad.

The trail starts out by a creek and a lot of Aspen trees. It's a very pretty area and looks ideal for moose and elk. A few miles in the trail forks and this is where you will end up finishing the loop. We decided to go clockwise and hit Twin Crater Lake first. The hike hit a lot of streams and had some pretty views as you hiked along side of the mountain however you definitely earned it because it was uphill the entire way. When we decided to do the Twin Crater branch, we didn't know it was about 1,500 more elevation gain but the views were very pretty from the top. The first picture is the larger of the lakes with the smaller one behind it to the right.

Here is a view as we were headed back down from the lake. There are a lot of streams and campsites in the valley.

Throughout the trail there were a ton of smaller lakes and we took way too many pictures so here are a few of my favorites. This lake is called Rawah lake Number 3.

This is a stream going into Upper Camp Lake. You can barely see the lake but this was probably the prettiest one for me since I liked the mountains in the background.

Overall this was an amazing hike. I wish we would have done it in 2 days to truly get to spend time at more of the lakes. While we didn't see any wildlife other than a few deer, if you get there early enough I'm sure you'll see a lot. It's a fairly popular hike so you'll see a lot of backpackers.

Montgomery Pass Trail

The last day we wanted to do a shorter hike since my feet were not very happy about the previous day. Montgomery Pass was about 10 min away from Chambers Lake. If you just go to the top of the pass it's about 4.4 miles down and back but the top of the mountain adds another mile or so. I was a pansy because of blisters so I went to the pass but Ali headed all the way to the top. 

While the trail was nice, compared to the previous ones it wasn't anything special. The first portion is just a wooded trail followed by a more open treeless section. If it wasn't so hazy the views would have been a lot better.

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.

Hallet Peak

For this weekend's adventure, Ali and I headed up to Estes Park to hike Hallett Peak. Little did we know, it actually starts out at one of our favorite trail heads, Bear Lake. This trailhead is great for people of all fitness levels since the trails split off in a lot of different ways and you can do as little or as much as you want. For Hallet however, we went to the right side of Bear Lake Which doesn't have as many shorter trails.

According to AllTrails, this is about a 9.6 mile hike and a 3,280 foot elevation gain. While you start to feel the elevation a little at the top of the peak, it's not bad at all and there are no real steep sections other than the end. It's just a gradual uphill grind. So enough of that, let's get to the pictures!

As soon as you leave Beaver Lake, you are on an uphill stretch with quite a few trees on both sides of you. There isn't much of a few for a while but then as you get up higher, there are a few overlooks of various lakes below you. I really like the picture below since you can see all of the mountains and one lake up close and one in the distance.

After you get above 11,000 or so, your views change quite a bit from tress to more of an open mountain feeling. It got a little windy up here but it wasn't too bad. Here is another picture of the lake as you look down the mountain range. It also got my little marmot friend in the picture doing some sun bathing.

The next two pictures show the top of Hallet Peak. The trail itself is called Flattop Mtn. Trail and the section to the right is a fairly long flat section before you start your final uphill climb.

Then we got a few pics at the top which was around 12,713 feet.

Overall I really enjoyed the hike. It had some good views of both lakes and the mountains. It'd be a good hike to get you used to higher elevation without having very steep uphill climbs.

Arapaho Pass Trail (Caribou & Dorothy Lake)

For this weekend's hike we headed back to the Fourth of July Trailhead. This is a pretty popular trailhead outside of Nederland. Getting there only takes about 1.5 hours from Denver but the last 4 miles is pretty rocky and bumpy so be prepared. Luckily there are no specific parking rules here so you don't have to come too early to get a spot but it definitely fills up fast and isn't as fun later during the day.

We started our hike around 7:15ish and didn't run into hardly anyone until we were on our way back. The first part of the trail is through some woods and goes over some small creeks. It's a steady uphill climb but nothing major. Once you get past that, you are walking along side of a mountain and there are some pretty nice views of the valley. The first two pictures below is a pretty nice view of the valley headed back to the trailhead and also a view of some small ponds.

Once you get pat that, you can then go right to Caribou Lake or left to Dorothy. We started out going right and as you can see from the picture below, Ali is posing above Caribou. Be warned, it's pretty windy at this point so you need to be prepared. Also, there is about a 1,000 elevation difference between the top of the mountain and Caribou Lake so it makes walking back not very fun.

Once we hit Caribou, we walked about 1.5 miles or so in the valley. It was very pretty with small streams and waterfalls. Yet again, we were the only people there so it was very peaceful.

After we got back up to the split, we then hiked about 7 minutes to Dorothy Lake. It wasn't anything special but since we were there we figured why not. The picture below shows the trail headed to Dorothy.

By the time it was all said and done, we ended up hiking almost 12 miles with quite a bit of elevation gain. As you can see from the green chart below, what really sucked was the ups and downs. But overall I would recommend this trail. It had a very good mixture of terrain and as long as you get there early, it's pretty secluded as well.

Grays Peak

Over the past few weeks we've been trying to hike Grays and Torreys but haven't had much luck with the weather. Finally on Friday it said no rain and fairly warm so we decided to give it a shot. Needless to say, the weather was wrong.

We started out the hike in the drizzling rain but it wasn't too bad since we were layered up and the views were very pretty. The first mile or so follows a creek fairly to your left and you have mountains on all sides of you. Below is a picture from the trailhead.

As you continue to head uphill, the views stay fairly similar until you can finally see the peaks. The tops are covered in the picture below due to the clouds but it still looked pretty cool.

After your gradual uphill, which starts at 11,000 already, you then start to really head uphill. I'm not used to hiking above 12,000 a whole lot and I could definitely feel the lack of oxygen. As you start getting towards the top, it gets fairly rocky but the views of the meadow leading back to the trailhead were nice.

Unfortunately at about 13,000 our light drizzle turned into windy/snowy conditions. We both made it up to Grays but couldn't see more than 30 feet in front of us so we didn't end up going over to Torreys as well. We just hit the peak at around 14,278 and then took the saddle-back, which you can see below, then made our way down.

All-in-all we ended up going ~8 miles with a 3,600ish elevation gain. It was definitely a more tiring hike due to the altitude even though the distance wasn't very far. We'll have to head back with better weather and try to tackle both of them and actually get to enjoy the views.

Thunder Lake via Ouzel Falls

For this week's hike Ali and I headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. After going through our usual 20 minutes of, "What hike do you want to go on?" and the typical response of, "I don't care, what hike do you want to go on?" a few times, we finally settled on Ouzel Falls. Once we got there however things looked a tad on the familiar side and we suddenly remembered we did Blue Bird Lake in this area last year. Oh well, there are a few different trails around here so off we went.

To start, this is a fairly popular hike so I recommend getting there before 7:30 if you want a parking spot. Since the first part of the hike is fairly easy and takes you to the falls, it's common for a lot of families to be on the first few miles of the trail. However I wouldn't rush the first part of the hike to get away from everyone as the bulk of the trail is right beside the river and it's very pretty. There are quite a few random smaller falls until it leads up to Ouzel Falls which is where the majority of the families stop. Below are a few pictures of the river and some of the falls.

After the falls we branched right to heard toward Blue Bird, Thunder, and Lion Lake. I enjoyed this part of the trail because you are walking along the side of the valley and it has a good view of the mountains in the distance. It was also pretty shady which was nice since the weather as a tad on the warm side. You'll pass two more branch off spots for Lion and Blue Bird but we decided to head to Thunder Lake. The trail was pretty secluded the day we were there and was a nice mix of some mountain views and being in the forest. The lake itself was your typical end of the hike lake with mountains surrounding it. Below is a picture of Thunder Lake. 

Overall I would definitely recommend this hike. It's good a good mixture of rivers, water falls, mountain views, and lakes. While the falls are probably the most distinguishing factor on this hike, I have no complaints about everything else. Even though AllTrails said it was around 11.5 miles, my Fenix tracked around 14 miles with a 2,386 elevation gain. I know we did a little more walking around than just hitting the trail so that may account for another mile.