Mt. Ida

I’ll get to Mt. Ida in a moment, but first I’ll mention that I made a trip to one of my happy places: Black Lake. I’ve been there a couple of dozen times, so there’s not much point in going into any details. It was a sort of last-minute decision, insofar as a trip to the Bear Lake corridor in RMNP can be last-minute. I picked up a pass to get me in between 8 and 10 and arrived a few minutes after 8. The line at the entrance station was quite long.

My plan was to perhaps make it to Blue Lake, but I figured that might be a bit on the aspirational side, being that it was still June (the 28th, actually). I encountered a number of people who said they were headed to Black Lake, but I never saw any of them again. There wasn’t a huge amount of snow, but clearly enough to discourage many people.

I went a short way above Black Lake and found a nice picnic spot. Being that I got a bit of a late start and there was a little more snow than I was expecting, I didn’t really try to go any farther. As I had my picnic, a number of hikers came down from above. I chatted with two pairs of hikers who had wanted to get to Frozen Lake but were stymied by the first water crossing. Another pair of hikers told me they’d failed to reach Green Lake.

Friday, July 5

The idea to finally summit Mt. Ida wasn’t exactly last-minute, but it was poorly planned. By that, I mainly mean to say that I was oblivious to the fact that the Park would be about as crowded as any day on the calendar.

I arrived at the entrance station at 7. Well, let’s say I made it to the Beaver Meadows visitor center at 7. It took another 15 minutes to get to the entrance station. When the day dawned I was thinking that I’d have a nice uncrowded run over Trail Ridge Road. Hah! Silly me.

Now that reality has set in, I was starting to think about a Plan B. There isn’t much parking at the Milner Pass trailhead and I doubted I’d be able to get a parking spot. This concern was well-founded. When I got there, the lot was full. I needed a comfort stop, and so I parked illegally to use the restroom. Luckily, no Plan B was necessary, as somebody was leaving by the time I returned to my car.

I put boots on the trail at 8:17. This is my fourth hike up the Mt. Ida trail, none of the previous three with the intention of reaching the summit. They were all about reaching the various Gorge Lakes. There are three I haven’t been to: Inkwell, Azure, and Highest. I’ve proved that they’re out of my reach from below. Foster has a couple of routes to those three from above. It’s probably too steep for me, but I won’t know until I put eyes on the terrain. So off to the summit I finally go.

I seem to have weather issues whenever I’m hiking around Mt. Ida. My first visit to Arrowhead was the day it started raining in the 2013 floods. On my backpacking trip, we got rained on for more than a day. I got rained on, too, when I made it to Julian Lake. Today, the sky is a vivid blue with some small fluffy clouds. Yay!

The morning was chilly. I started in shirtsleeves, a bit cool, but expecting to keep warm through exertion. This worked until about fifteen minutes after I got above treeline. The wind was not fierce, but brisk. I put on my jacket.

I passed about as many hikers as passed me and didn’t encounter any people on their way down until I was maybe half an hour from the summit. One of the online guides says this hike is one of the most popular in the Park. There’s not enough parking to support that idea, but it is a popular hike. I was on the summit for about an hour. People came and went, but there were always eight or ten on top.

It took me three hours to reach the top. It took me about three seconds to decide there was no way I’d get to any of the Gorge Lakes from up here.

There were fat marmots everywhere. Twice they didn’t move off the trail until I was within a step of them. At the top, they were so used to people that they’d come right up to us, sniffing our bags. Brazen. I saw a few pikas, always carrying grass or flowers in their mouths, but couldn’t get a photo. They don’t stand still. On the summit, one ran almost between the feet of a guy I was talking to.

There’s a fairly long stretch of trail that weirds me out. I swear, it’s uphill in both directions. It’s not, of course, but it sure seems that way to me. Looking at the map, I see it runs within a few feet of 12,000 for a long stretch. Hiking up, even though you’re not climbing, you’re going up to that summit up there, so it looks like this level stretch is uphill. I don’t have a great explanation as to why it looks like it’s climbing on the way down.

On the way back, it wasn’t me asking people questions, it was people asking me. One guy wanted me to point out the summit for him. I thought the answer was fairly obvious, being the highest thing around, but didn’t give a snarky answer. Nearly back to treeline, another guy stopped me to ask how far it was to the top. I told him it took me three hours from the car; he said, “Two hours from here, then?” He looked disappointed. I suggested he go a bit farther up the trail and then find a nice spot to enjoy the view for a few minutes.

Two and a half hours from the summit back to the car. About half an hour from the car, when I took my jacket off, I realized I had neglected to slather on any SPF. Oops. I had the jacket on nearly the entire time, with the hood up for quite a bit of it, so hopefully my face wouldn’t be too badly burned. I only used my trek poles near the summit, and when I had the poles stowed, I often had my hands in my pockets.

Back at the car, I applied the sunscreen, better late than never, and took the top off the car for the drive home. Even if the traffic is horrible, I can enjoy the ideal weather for a drive in a convertible.

Trail Ridge Road and US 36 weren’t as bad as I was expecting. Traffic on 36 moved at nearly the speed limit. And I was pleasantly surprised that, instead of Friday rush hour congestion, traffic was very light from Boulder to home.