Here it is the middle of September and I’ve only been to RMNP for two day trips and a backpacking trip. This is the least amount of time I’ve spent in the Park since we returned from our exile in Phoenix. I haven’t set foot in Wild Basin or even driven on CO 7 this year. It seems like a good time to hike to Lion Lakes.

There are four named lakes there, and a couple of falls. The hike affords nice views of the dramatic eastern face of Mount Alice. There are no campsites here, and stock is not allowed on the trail, and as it’s nearly seven miles to Lion Lake #1 it’s not crowded.

Thursday, September 12

I awoke before my alarm went off and I was out of the house and to the trailhead earlier than expected. There was plenty of parking and I backed into an end spot by the restrooms.

I’ve been to Lion Lakes a few times. I tend to get a little obsessive about going to a different place for every hike. I need to get over it. But the fact that I make repeat visits to a place says a lot about what I think of the place. I yearn to visit new places. When I don’t scratch that itch, I’m not going to go back to someplace that I think is unexceptional.

I didn’t really have a plan for the day, other than getting to Lion Lake #1. I had options. By the time I got to the lake, I had decided what to do. If you follow the unnamed outlet stream down from Lion Lake #1 you’ll come across Thunder Falls. Foster says the place is “no small task to reach”. The navigation sounds pretty simple, though, so I assume there must be obstacles.

I stopped for lunch at the lake. The million-dollar view is from the east bank. Today I went to the west bank. Much of the west bank is a grassy marsh, but by mid-September, it’s pretty dry. I picked one of the large, flat boulders in the pleasant sunshine and had my lunch: a PB&J sandwich, chips, and a beer.

I have a couple of go-to sandwiches for hikes. One is a turkey bacon avocado and pepper-jack cheese, where the bacon is jalapeno bacon. The other is ham, salami, and pepperoni with provolone cheese. I almost never take a peanut butter sandwich.

My favorite peanut butter delivery mechanism is toast. Put a stout slice of homemade bread in the toaster just until it starts to brown. I want warmth but not crispiness. Slather on a nice layer of creamy peanut butter and wait a minute. The peanut butter gets molten. You have to be sure to hold the toast level, or it drips into your hand. Not very portable, though.

When it comes to PB&J, I’ll say I haven’t had peanut butter and jelly since about the second grade. Jam or preserves beat jelly every time. Strawberry was my favorite in my misspent youth. It’s been red raspberry for ages now.

Today’s sandwich was on the store-bought sourdough rather than my low-budget home-baked bread. My bread is on the dense side. I wanted pockets. Sourdough has nice pockets. The slices are a bit small, so I made two sandwiches. They survived the morning’s hike unsmushed, which was nice. By the time I bit into one, the preserves had infused the bread and filled the pockets. Yum.

By now you might be wondering just what sort of beer pairs with a PB&J sandwich. To tell the truth, I didn’t put any thought into it at all. I got lucky. I brought New Belgium’s 1985 Mango IPA. The tart hoppiness of the IPA complemented the sourdough bread, while the sour mango played well with the raspberry.

Picnic over, I headed for Thunder Falls. Even though I wanted to be on the east side of the stream, I continued circumnavigating the lake. I ran the risk of not finding a convenient streamcrossing. The outlet of the lake is typically marshy. The stream meanders lazily and there are a few ponds. I found an easy crossing, then worked my way downstream.

The bushwhacking wasn’t terribly difficult. The deadfall wasn’t too bad, and the ground descends very gradually at first. You can hear the falls long before you can see them. Obviously, the terrain next to the falls is as steep as the falls. I wanted to get to the bottom of the falls, but all the rocks below me were wet, so I didn’t want to go that way. I made a half-hearted search for another route before giving up. The falls aren’t very large, and there’s not much water in the stream. If I were to return in July, when the flow is much greater, I’d make more of an effort to see the falls from below.

I had nearly complete solitude much of the day. About half an hour away from the lake I ran into one hiker on his way down. He turned around before he got there. While having lunch, I saw two pairs of hikers, one going up and the other going down. I didn’t see anybody else until I back to the main trail, a bit over a mile from the parking lot.

When I got back to the car, my nice end spot wasn’t an end spot anymore. A Volvo with Texas plates was parked cattywampus in front of me, between the tree and the rock, on top of the slab of sidewalk. C’mon, man!

It was another enjoyable hike. The weather was ideal, the solitude was welcome, the exercise invigorating, the scenery fantastic, and the PB&J and beer were tasty.