Category Archives: Day Hikes

Lulu City

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For several years, I’ve been telling people that I try to spend between twelve and eighteen days each year in the Park. I’ll admit that what I tell people may sometimes be an exaggeration, but I think I’m safe in saying that I’ve averaged more than a dozen days a year since 2008. If I pull a number out of the hat for visits prior to 2008, I might have spent another eighty days total. That means I’ve spent a total of over 260 days wandering around the Park. And yet, somehow, I’ve never been to Lulu City, one of the most popular hikes on the west side of the Park.

Ghost Town

Before seeing the place, I might have called it a ghost town.

I tend to spend a lot of time planning my little jaunts, and this one was no different. Usually, my research is reading a few paragraphs of Foster’s guide, then pulling up the area on CalTopo maps. My habit is to leave this browser window open for days or weeks, looking at it a couple of times a day. For Lulu City, though, I dug a bit deeper.

I have a giant book called Ghost Towns of the West that was published back in 1971. In the introduction, the authors define a ghost town. They say, “Most of the towns described and pictured in this book are ‘dead’ ghosts, but some still have life, though nothing to compare with the lusty vigor they enjoyed in their heyday.” Their chapter for Colorado is 112 pages. There’s no entry for Lulu City, but there are entries for Black Hawk, Breckenridge, Buena Vista, Central City, Creede, Crested Butte, Fairplay, Georgetown, Leadville, Silverton, and Telluride, among other places I’d never have considered “ghost towns”. I find this unsatisfying.

Digging deeper, I managed to find a paper written in 1980 that covers Lulu City and Dutchtown. I have a backcountry permit to stay at the Dutchtown campsite in August, so I’ll leave that part of the story for later.

What’s a Park?

The first chapter of this paper (authored by Susan Baldwin) gives a history of Middle Park. Here I will confess that, having lived in Colorado for more than four decades, and having heard the name “Middle Park”, I never knew where it was.

In this context, a park is a large upland valley. The word comes from the French word “parc”, which means “enclosure”. The principal ones are North Park (which was originally called “New Park”), Middle Park (originally “Old Park”), South Park, and the San Luis Valley. I’m quite familiar with North, South, and San Luis. These are large basins, lie at relatively high altitudes, and are miles across in all directions. “Basin” is a fitting term, in my opinion. I have never really thought of North Park or South Park or the San Luis Valley as valleys. They’re all more or less oval shapes, have flat bottoms, and lack trees.

The topography of Middle Park differs markedly from that of North and South Parks making it isolated and relatively inaccessible. Middle Park isn’t oval, but Y-shaped. The southern entrance to Middle Park is Berthoud Pass. In the west, it stretches to Kremmling. And the northern arm is the valley where you will find the headwaters of the Colorado River. That is, where you’ll find Lulu City and Dutchtown.

Who Built Lulu City?

Because Middle Park was relatively difficult to reach, there’s not a long history of the place. The northern arm of the Park was a fertile hunting ground for the Northern Utes. Baldwin says “The streams were filled with fish, and game was abundant with elk, deer, mountain sheep, antelope, buffalo, all varieties of bear including grizzlies, grouse, sage hens, ducks, geese, and turkeys making Middle Park the best hunting ground in Colorado.” The Utes weren’t the only Indians aware of this and they had frequent conflicts with the Arapahos, Sioux, Crow, and Blackfoot Indians who also vied with the Utes for use of the region.

It wasn’t until after gold was found in Cripple Creek and Central City that whites were attracted to the place. Fremont wandered through the place in 1844, and Powell visited in 1868 (when he submitted Longs Peak), and there were a few other early visitors. But these were visitors. Whites didn’t settle here in any numbers until the 1870s.

Most of these early settlers were looking for gold. A number of mines were dug here on both sides of the Colorado River (originally called the Grand River; thus the name of Grand County and Grand Lake). There were enough people in the vicinity to warrant building towns, and thus Grand Lake and Lulu City were born, both in 1879.

Why is Lulu City a ghost town but not Grand Lake? Grand Lake was built more as a place to supply miners while Lulu was where the mines were. The basic problem was that the mines in the area supplied only low-grade ore. Access to Lulu was limited to wagon and horseback, and that was restricted by the harsh winters. Taking this low-grade ore out was difficult, and there wasn’t enough financial incentive to build a smelter at Lulu.

Lulu did have a sawmill, without which a town couldn’t be built. But that was about the extent of local industry. The plat of Lulu City (laid out by H.Y. Harding, Deputy U.S Surveyor, in early June of 1880) was conceived on an ambitious scale and encompassed 160 acres of land and was situated along the North Fork of the Grand River. Its east-west streets were numbered from 1st to 19th and those running north-south were given the names Lead Mountain, Trout, Riverside, and Howard.

Towns didn’t just spring up out of thin air. Generally, the first step was to make a company. In this case, it was the Middle Park and Grand River Mining and Land Improvement Company, created by a group of Fort Collins residents. They had an ambitious plan. According to the Fort Collins Courier, they “were supplied with tools and building materials and under the direction of Mr. Harris, an experienced mechanic, some eight or ten buildings will be put up before they return. A hotel, store, saloon, blacksmith shop, and various other business enterprises will be opened between now and mid-June. Steps are being taken to establish mail route from Fort Collins to Lulu City and other points in Middle and North Park. Management of the company is in the hands of competent and responsible people and no pains nor expense have been spared in acquiring perfect title to its property.”

A bustling place in the summers, almost no one stayed over the winter. The one road in was impassable until mid-June. The mines were for the most part deserted by late 1883 as was Lulu City. Postal service was discontinued on November 26, 1883, and no elections were held there that year. In December 1883 it was noted that “Lulu is practically dead for the winter, the bears having run everyone out of there. J.R. Godsmark, county judge elect, will winter at the Lake and as he has been the mainstay of Lulu, it will leave that place without a head.”

Much anxiety is felt for the safety of the mines at Lulu. Since the departure of Judge Godsmark and some more of the old timers, the bears and mountain lions have taken possession of the boys’ houses and old, discarded overalls and gumboots, and are running municipal government of their own, to wit; using all their efforts to restore Lulu to its primeval status. But wait until Judge returns and assumes the judicial ermine, then their rule will soon end. Lulu has bright future in store for her the coming summer.

Georgetown Colorado Miner, January 5, 1884

The bright future never happened. Lulu City was history before the end of 1884. The low grade of the ore, the lack of a smelter, and the harsh winters did the place in. There was never a school, never a church, and most of the buildings were tents. Joseph E. Shipler was one of the founders, and he was about the last to leave. Remnants of his cabin still stand, and he was greeting visitors as late as 1912, when Rocky Mountain National Park was founded.

Thursday, June 23

I left the house promptly at 6am. For these west side hikes, I generally take Berthoud pass in the morning and Trail Ridge Road in the afternoon, but today I decided to do TRR in both directions. This probably cost me nearly half an hour, but the hike is a short one so an 8:30 start is not a big deal. This summer, timed-entry passes are required at all times for the Bear Lake corridor, but only after 9am for the remainder of the Park. I arrived at the Beaver Meadows entrance station shortly after 7am. Only one gate was open and I waited in line for twenty minutes.

The trail parallels the Colorado River. It runs a few feet of elevation above the valley floor. It has to: much of the valley floor is marshy grassland. Foster says it’s 3.5 miles from the trailhead to Lulu, with a 320′ elevation gain. The sign on the trail has the distance at 3.7 miles. The 320′ is net gain, so you really climb a bit more than 400′ as the spur trail to Lulu is after the main trail has started rising from the valley. This little spur, about two-tenths of a mile, is easily the steepest section of the entire trail.

There’s one area where a “temporary” trail makes a detour. High water has washed away part of the trail. Rangers have marked the detour with little flags on each end of the detour, but in the middle the trail gets indistinct and several routes are possible, including one that I took which had a steep, wet, slippery section.

Foster lists this hike as “family-friendly”. I would agree with this, but the short detour might make it less friendly for little kids. As well, there are a number of downed trees that block the trail. Hopefully, these will be rectified this summer.

Shipler’s cabin ruins are somewhere along the trail. I never did see the place. I came across a little spur off the main trail. I went down this a few yards on my way up in the morning but gave up on it immediately. By the time I made it back here on the way back, I was convinced that Shipler’s cabin was down this trail. I was wrong.

There are a few places where the trail enters grassy meadows that are sufficiently high above the valley to not be marshes. Were I looking for a place to build a cabin in 1880 or so, many of these would have been possibilities.

  • Never Summer Peak
  • Mine Tailings
  • Howard Mtn
  • Howard Mtn
  • Never Summer Peak
  • Spot the Moose
  • Standing in the middle of the Colorado River
  • My Marmot Friend

Earlier, I said that this is one of the more popular hikes on the west side of the Park. I have no data to support this. And, in fact, on the hike up to Lulu, I only encountered two other hikers. But on arrival at Lulu, I came across a group of about fifteen guys, all sitting in a circle and telling stories. I stayed there for an hour. Another group of five or six arrived, along with a random selection of couples and solo hikers. On the way out, I passed a stream of hikers surpassed only by what you’d encounter between Bear Lake and Emerald Lake.

The location of Lulu is quite nice. It has a nice view (but not a spectacular one), and the river meanders a bit in a stony bed a few times wider than the stream itself. Here, we’re only about two miles from the headwaters and even in late June with the water running fairly high, it’s hard to imagine this river carving the Grand Canyon (there’s the old name again!). If I’d brought my trek poles with me, I’m sure I could have forded the river without taking my boots off and still had dry feet.

It took me only an hour and a half to get to Lulu, so it was a little early for me to have lunch. I thought I’d stop at Shipler’s cabin for my picnic, but as I mentioned above, that didn’t exactly work out. I found a nice rock with a view of a bend in the river.

On the hike out, I came across the most mellow marmot I’ve ever seen. He was on a rock right next to the trail when I found him. I didn’t see him until I was within a few feet of him. I thought he was unaware of my presence, but he could clearly hear the shutter of my camera. He got off his rock to eat some flowers right on the trail. Hikers coming from the other direction didn’t bother him either: he pretty much looked at me, turned his back on me, and walked right up to the other hikers. There, he ate some more flowers before finally leaving the trail and letting us all proceed.

I made it back to the car shortly after 1pm, for a round-trip time of just over four hours. As that included an hour at Lulu and a lunch break on the way back, it’s a pretty easy hike.

Lower Forest Lake

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I can’t wait to get the summer hiking season going. This is often a slight problem in the first week of June: in Denver, it seems summer is here, but where I want to hike, it’s not summer at all. A hike in the first week of June always means hiking over snow when you get over about 10,000′. Perhaps even more so, given our two large storms in late May: one that dumped enough snow here at the house to produce a truckload of broken tree limbs, and one a week after that that produced over an inch of precipitation that manifested as about eighteen inches of snow above 9,000′.

Having neglected to plan ahead by purchasing a timed entry pass for RMNP, I decided another visit to James Peak Wilderness would be a good alternative. Of the five hikes here, the lakes that are lowest are Forest Lakes. I did this hike last year about this time, so this will be a repeat.

June 3, 2022

In July and August, you have to get to the trailhead quite early to find a parking place. On a weekday in the first week of June, parking isn’t a problem. I arrived at about 8:15 and was the third car in the lot. At the trailhead, I signed into the log book as the first entry of the day. Either the parties belonging to the other two cars camped overnight or neglected to sign in.

On the lower part of the trail – the first quarter of a mile – the trail isn’t so much a trail as a small river. The next quarter-mile, the trail is in shade. There wasn’t any snow on the trail, but banks of snow lined both sides of the trail. Clearly, I’d be dealing with a bit more snow than last year. Last year, we didn’t start hiking on snow until after we crossed the bridge over Arapaho Creek (at about 9,800′). Today, I was trudging over snow almost 500′ lower. So it goes.

Given the recent snows and the apparent small number of visitors, I was a bit concerned about route-finding. There were quite a few tracks in the snow just above the bridge, but they quickly petered out until there were only two sets: a pair of snowshoe tracks heading up, and the tracks of a hiker just in boots that looked to be a round-trip: both uphill and down. One thing about following tracks in the snow: you have to hope that the people making the tracks went where you want to go, and they know how to get there.

I didn’t bring snowshoes but did have the micro-spikes. The snow was pretty good – I only postholed twice on the way up to the lake. At the lake, I met the hikers who left the snowshoe tracks. They had hiked up yesterday and camped at the lake. Last year, there were plenty of snow-free rocks around the lake to sit on. Today there was just one. The three of us sat there and had our picnics.

  • View of the Contental Divide
  • Panorama shot
  • Only the lake’s outlet is free of ice
  • Meadow snow melting
  • Stream carving snow

I hung out for about an hour before packing up to leave. In this time, with the sun shining brightly on the snow, my hike out was slightly transformed. Each day the sun works its magic on the top of the snow, melting it a bit. Then, overnight, the top freezes, making it easy to walk on in the morning. My hike out was quite different than the hike in: I postholed hundreds of times. That’s only a slight exaggeration.

It may be counter-intuitive that the snow melts from the bottom, not the top. For the most part, you want to hike along the tops of the snowbanks and avoid stepping next to any rocks or trees that may be poking through the snow. Anything darker than the snow will heat up faster than the snow. If you step next to it, you’ll likely posthole either to mid-thigh or until your boot hits something solid. And, because the snow melts from the bottom, whatever solid you hit will be covered by running water. And any low spots between the tops of the snowbanks are good places to posthole, too.

I ran across one guy hiking to the lake and another couple quite near the trailhead. When I got back to the car, the parking lot was not quite twice as crowded as in the morning: there were now five cars in addition to my own.

Here’s a short timelapse of the sky. Notice that my camera slowly melted into the snow.

Manitou Incline

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The Manitou Incline is a trail that climbs a bit over 2,000′ in less than a mile. The sign at the base of the trail tells us there are 2,744 steps to the top, but a marker on the top step tells us it is the 2,768th. Evidently, the count varies somewhat over time due to trail maintenance. It is, by far, the steepest trail I’m aware of. By contrast, in RMNP, the steepest sections of any trail that pack animals are allowed on climbs about 400′ in six-tenths of a mile (a kilometer). To climb two thousand feet at that slope would take three miles.

So many people want to subject themselves to this torture that reservations are required.

I had the mental image of somebody standing at the bottom of this hill a hundred years ago and saying to themselves, “I know: let’s make a hiking trail that starts here and goes straight up to the top. That would be fun!” This imaginative scenario is not correct. The somewhat more reasonable story is that the trail is the remains of a narrow-gauge funicular railway whose tracks washed out during a rock slide in 1990.

(A funicular is essentially a cable car. Two cars, actually, attached to the cable and used to counterweight each other. Cog railways also are used to climb steep slopes, but they don’t use cables. The Pikes Peak Cog railway starts just a few yards from the base of the Incline.)

They say one should allow two hours to get to the summit. The record is in the seventeen-minute range. Some folks seem to think doing it once isn’t enough, so they came up with the “Inclinathon”: 13 consecutive trips up and down the Incline in one day and has been completed in less than 12 hours.

I’ve been thinking of tackling this challenge for a number of years. Somehow it never really bubbled to the top of my to-do list. A couple of weeks ago, Chad reached out to me and asked if I wanted to join him.

Friday, April 8

Our reservations were in the 9:30-10:00 am slot, and we arrived in the area right on time. We found a parking lot with lots of open spaces, but it’s parking for the Barr Trail, and Incline hikers aren’t allowed to park here. Next, we found the lot for the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. No Incline parking here, either. We finally found the right place, which, naturally, adds a quarter of a mile and maybe 200′ of elevation we’d need to gain.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather. The forecast high was for the mid-60s and calm. At the start, it was still cool enough to wear a hoodie but with the bright sunshine and cloudless cerulean sky, we were soon down to shirtsleeves and getting out the sunscreen.

We hit the first step of the incline at 9:36, at the same time as a woman and her son who looked to be about six years old. An indication of my performance on this hike is that I only managed to beat this six-year-old to the top by a few minutes. Judging by the dirt on the seat of his pants, he spent a lot of time waiting for his mother (and us other slow hikers) to catch up to him.

It wasn’t my lung capacity that was the limiting factor here. It was my legs. Most of the steps are single railroad ties, but in the steeper parts, each step is two railroad ties. And in some places, the ties are so close together that the tread width of the step is shorter than my boot is long. (The Incline is famous for its steepness, with an average grade of 45% (24°) and as steep as 68% (34°) in places.)

Not far from the bottom, a small herd of deer browsed their way across the trail. They’re quite acclimated to people; several of them came within 8 or 10 feet of me. I think I might have been able to pet them, had I been so inclined. Sorry for the pun.

I didn’t see anybody running up, but quite a few ran down. I thought I saw somewhere that the Incline is one-way: climb up the Incline and take the Barr Trail back down. The hardcore group didn’t get enough agony on the trip up, they had to compound it by going back down the steps. No way I could have done it. We saw one guy who made two trips, and one gal we encountered was going down the steps backward. She said it was easier on the legs and falls wouldn’t be so bad. She said she would make a second ascent as soon as she got back to the base. At this point, I have no plans to do it a second time in my life, let alone a second time in a day.

There’s a marker on every hundredth step so you have a good idea of just how much torture still lies ahead of you. Or maybe I should say “above you”. I never bothered to count, so I don’t know how accurate these markers are. When we reached step 2000, I was a few steps above our intrepid 6-year-old. Naturally, he was unable to fight the need to start counting: “2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, …”.

At one point, I looked up and decided that I’d only need to take two more breaks before reaching the top. Seems I did this when looking at a bit of a “false summit”. I could see the top, but it didn’t look as far as it actually was, and a particularly steep section was obscured. I think I actually stopped five or six more times. Chad was a good sport about it and slowed his pace to stay with me. I have no doubt he’d have finished on the order of half an hour quicker than me.

Because I kept stopping to rest, I had plenty of opportunity to look at how the trail was made. For the most part, the timbers are flat, level, and square. They’re all attached with fittings to stout cables on each end, and the cables are anchored in concrete periodically up the slope. But, hikers and the weather have conspired to shift some of the ties so that they’re rotated a bit, or the soil behind them is starting to wash away. I imagine they need to constantly do a fair amount of work to keep the trail in good enough condition to support the traffic it gets.

We gained the summit at noon precisely. I had the forethought to pack a couple of beers. They were (amazingly) still cold. I didn’t set any records in climbing the Incline, but I did suck that beer down my gullet in pretty quick time.

  • The view from the parking lot.
  • Obligatory selfie at the base.
  • Warning!
  • Not so wild wildlife.
  • We’re doing this for fun?
  • Almost to the top. Some of us are nearly crawling.
  • Last step: #2768
  • At the top, looking down.

The hike down the Barr Trail is quite pleasant in comparison to the Incline and doesn’t merit much description, other than that it’s fairly highly engineered (many retaining walls and fences) to handle the traffic.

I’m writing this the next day. My calves are quite sore. I’ll try to minimize my trips up and down the stairs today.

Haiyaha Ice

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Thursday, March 3

With just about zero advance planning, Ed and I returned to Lake Haiyaha, where we had just visited less than two weeks ago. We arrived at the Bear Lake parking lot with no destination in mind, but with the warm temperature and (seemingly) calm winds, we decided it might actually be pleasant enough at Haiyaha that we wouldn’t freeze our fingers off if we tried to take pictures of the ice.

Our prediction was spot-on. I never took my gloves out of the pack. We spent about an hour at the lake, wandering around inspecting the endlessly fascinating ice, eating our picnic lunches, and occasionally chatting with other visitors to the lake. I even ran the GoPro, thinking the thin veil of high clouds would be both interesting and calming. Sadly, the camera fell on its back after about seven minutes, shooting straight up until the battery was exhausted. No timelapse video again this hike. So it goes.

I am left, then, trying to show what the ice looks like. I probably should just put these in a slide show and be done with it, but instead, I’ll blather on and on about each shot.

Here we see Ed working on getting some photographic evidence. Huddled around these rocks poking through the ice, we could occasionally hear a soft crack. The ice is constantly, slowly, dropping. It’s a mosaic of many pieces, large and not-so-large, and if you listen carefully (and the wind is calm, as it is today), you can hear it settle.

Where the rocks punch through the ice (which drops something like eight or ten or fifteen feet over the course of the winter, due to the lake having a leak) we can see the ice from the side. It’s a pale blue over most of the lake and filled with columns of tiny air bubbles.

Next to one of the larger boulders where the wind swirls madly, the ice is almost perfectly clear and has very few of the little bubbles we see in the light blue ice covering the rest of the lake. It’s sometimes difficult to figure out its shape, as it features no flat surfaces and lenses the light unpredictably. Most interesting here, I think, is where it at first looks like there’s some snow on top of the ice, with gaps in the snow like the holes in swiss cheese. But it’s not really snow, and it’s not on top of the ice, but a layer in the ice. Where the layer below this seeming snow is absent, I ran my finger along the under surface. Where it looks like snow, these are voids with the bottom of the ice, coated by tiny crystals that look like snow. Note the crack in the upper layer, curving from the lower left of the frame through the center.

I was unable to get a decent photo of the ripples on the absolutely clear ice, so I found a rippled area on the blue ice. I can’t help but wonder just how the ice gets to be this way. The water doesn’t flow here, and it certainly doesn’t freeze quickly enough to freeze any water waves. I can only conclude that these ripples are carved by the wind, blasted and polished by snow and small ice crystals.

Here I’m looking straight down into the ice. It’s probably a foot thick here. Again, there’s no snow here. The hole extends deeper than I can reach with my finger. Wherever it looks like snow in the ice it’s actually a void, with small crystals coating the bottom of the ice (or the top of the void, whichever way you want to look at it.)

I’m a big fan of variety. There is a wide variety of beautiful sights to take in in the Park. So my tendency is to want to visit places I haven’t been to before, or to revisit places I haven’t been to for quite some time. But Lake Haiyaha in winter always seems to provide me with something new to take in. Who knows? Maybe I’ll make another trip here before summer.

Lake Haiyaha

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So, three months since I Iast posted. Not good.

I haven’t done a track day or a scenic drive pretty much since LOG. The car has been in various states of disassembly since the first of November. I’m happy to report that its current state of disassembly is “nearly reassembled”. I’ll have a full report on that when it’s done.

And yesterday was my first hike in ages.

Saturday, February 5

Chad reached out to me a while back offering to join me on my next hike. He doesn’t have snowshoes, though, so it meant sticking to the beaten path, or he could rent a pair. The third choice was to see if Ed wanted to take a walk with us: he has a spare pair of snowshoes. Ed, as usual, was up for a trip to Haiyaha.

Regular readers here know that I’ve been there many times. So there won’t be much to this report, as I don’t feel the need to repeat myself.

I woke up well in advance of my alarm and laid in bed listening to the wind rock the house. If it’s windy enough here to rock the house, I couldn’t help but wonder how bad it would be at our destination. I was thinking my day would be cold and miserable. I asked myself whose idea it was to go up there. Nobody to blame but me: it was my idea.

While I was awake well before my alarm, something went wrong with Chad’s. He called about the time he was expected here. I let Ed know we’d be a bit late. I was thinking we’d be 45 minutes late, but we made good time and got to the entrance station right at 8. This was perfect timing. Perfectly bad: if we’d been there a few minutes earlier, we’d have sailed right through. Instead, we were in a line of more than a dozen cars. Took us ten minutes to get through.

It was Chad’s first trip to Haiyaha, so every time Ed came to a picture spot, Chad took a picture. We had a bit of excitement when, at the second such spot, Chad realized his phone was missing. One of my snowshoes was coming off, so while I was fixing that, Ed and Chad backtracked. They found his phone pretty quickly. Luckily it didn’t hit the snow edge-on, as they may never have found it.

At the start, I told Chad that Ed knows every rock and tree in the area. He probably thought I was exaggerating. I’m not. When we exchanged greetings with the volunteers at the trailhead, Ed told them about a tree that had fallen. I guess it’s on the park trail from Haiyaha to Glacier Gorge Junction. He pointed it out to us when we got there.

You’d really need to know every tree in the area to know that a tree that’s on the ground in the middle of a forest is freshly fallen. The cool thing about this one is that when it fell, it “trimmed” a tree that it fell on. It looks like it fell directly on this other tree, or maybe an inch or two from dead-center: every branch and limb of this still-standing tree was torn off one side of the trunk, right at the trunk. Quite the pruning job.

The main attraction of Haiyaha, for me, is the ice. (Yes, I’m repeating earlier reports.) The lake has a leak. Ice forms on it, the water drains, and the ice drops several feet. Large rocks poke out like volcanoes, breaking the ice into large slabs. Given the luxury of moderate weather, you can spend a fair amount of time inspecting the ice: the different hues of blue in the different light, the columns of frozen bubbles, the wind-carved surface ripples.

Today, the weather was not moderate. It was quite nice in the forest, out of the wind. But, as usual in winter, the lake (and any other lake just below the Divide) is like the floor of a wind tunnel. I took a few pictures, but the conditions were a bit on the brutal side. I couldn’t keep my gloves off very long; they quickly got almost too cold to work the camera. I keep trying to get pictures that do the ice justice, but I’m just not that good.

We quickly decided to cross the lake and take our lunch break in a clump of trees on the other side. On our way, we watched some snowboarders make a short run. In the trees, mostly out of the wind, Ed showed us how to make a bench out of snow. We sat on the bench and ate. I usually like a leisurely meal, but not today. Even rushing it a bit, I was pretty quickly cold and wanting to get moving again. We all had our gloves off to eat, and my fingers were very cold by the time we got moving.

  • Ed leads the way
  • Haiyaha Ice
  • “Tiny bubbles…”
  • Lake Haiyaha
  • Longs Peak

I had the GoPro with me, but on arrival at the lake the skies were clear and there wasn’t really any point in getting a time-lapse. Along the ridges, though, the wind was blowing so hard that the snow formed clouds along the ridges and the summit of Longs Peak.

It only took a few minutes of hiking to get me warmed back up, and I could feel my fingers again.

I don’t hike with trek poles. I bought a pair when I bought the snowshoes, used them once or twice, didn’t see the point and don’t really want to carry them around if I don’t find them worth it. I admit that on many hikes, there are occasions where I wish I had poles, but I always manage without. Today I figured I’d give poles another chance.

Two things I note: first, I experienced a bit of fatigue in muscles that I don’t normally exercise when I hike. Not a big deal, but by the time we got back to the car, I was tired of “carrying” them. Second, I found myself mesmerized by the sound they make in the snow as I pivot the pole. Not exactly the crunch of snow under a boot, but not far from it. Faint, but enough that I could feel the vibration in my hands. I really don’t know why I was so fascinated by it.

Back in my misspent youth, I hiked to Emerald Lake every Memorial Day every year for fifteen years or so. I don’t go there that often. Instead, it seems I’m now doing a mid-winter hike to Haiyaha. It’s not a bad trade.

Crater Lakes

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Monday, September 6

Back at the beginning of summer, I postulated that I could visit all the lakes in James Peak Wilderness in five hikes, which could easily be done in one hiking season. I also said I didn’t really plan on doing it. And, here we are, at my fifth hike in JPW. But, because it took me two hikes to get both Forest Lakes, I’m still (at least) one hike away from bagging all the lakes.

I picked Crater Lakes this time. I should be able to get to the highest Crater Lake without too much difficulty. The two lower lakes are only a 5.8-mile round trip, and adding the upper lake only extends the hike another eight tenths and about five hundred feet of elevation gain. Yeah, so the last section of trail is a bit steep…

On my Heart Lake hike, I chatted with a volunteer about getting to Clayton Lake. I asked about the no-longer-maintained trail up the outlet. He said he preferred to go via Crater Lakes. So I wanted to get a good look at any likely places to leave the Crater Lake trail in search of his route.

I got to the parking lot at 7:30 and there was still plenty of parking available. Being a holiday, I expected more people to be here. I entered my info into the logbook and put boots on the trail at 7:44. It’s about a mile and a half to the Crater Lakes trail junction, and I was there at 8:34. It was cool; I wore my hoodie. There was a young guy with an SLR who started only a couple of minutes ahead of me. Overall our pace was almost identical – he was walking faster but stopped often to take pictures. In the end, he arrived at upper Crater Lake only a few minutes before me.

It’s about a mile from the trail junction to the lower Crater Lakes, climbing about 550 feet. But about 450 of those 550 is in the first half-mile from the trail junction up the side of the canyon. That is to say, that half-mile is a bit of a bitch.

That 450-foot climb puts you on a shelf. There are three shelves here. This lower one holds a pond, fed by the lakes above. The middle one has two lakes, a rounder northern one and a thinner southern one. The lakes are separated by a lightly forested isthmus. The small, high shelf is inundated by the upper Crater Lake. The two lower shelves are separated by only a hundred feet of elevation, but reaching the upper lake requires climbing another four hundred feet.

I get ahead of myself. When the climb up from the trail along S. Boulder Creek started leveling off, gaining the shelf, I kept an eye out for anything that looked like an easy way around the ridge to Clayton. I stopped and studied the map a couple of times but drew no conclusions.

Before I knew it, the smaller lake was off to my left. Here the trail started to split. The whole area is laced with a network of social trails, many of which lead you directly into someone’s campsite. Here I encountered two young women, early twenties. They were going to the upper lake as well. In navigating around someone’s tent, I managed to veer more toward the northern lake rather than heading up the obvious trail to my west, where I spotted SLR guy. The young ladies and I bushwacked in his direction.

Here we find ourselves at the base of our last four-hundred-foot ascent. This one starts with a quite steep climb up a loose, sandy surface. I find this stuff treacherous. I slip a lot. I made it up without too much difficulty. I was concerned about the descent, though. I really detest this stuff. Just a few yards away is a stream. It is snow-fed. There is no snow on any of the surrounding mountains, so this stream was just a trickle. It looked like it might be easier for me to go down the dry streambed with much less trepidation than this sandy shit.

  • The rounder, northern Crater Lake
  • Butterfly and Fireweed
  • Upper Crater Lake, Sprint Peak
  • … and the pond
  • Upper Crater Lake
  • A Descent View
  • On the Isthmus

At the top of this treacherous bit, the slope of the trail moderates somewhat, and the footing is much improved. The trail, hopping rocks now and then, leads to a saddle above us. This is the apex of our climb. On the saddle, we’re maybe a hundred higher than the lake. Most of the descent down to the lake is rock-hopping.

There’s a prominent rock outcropping that commands a view of the upper lake, the continental divide above it, and the small pond below it. The women took that spot. It was quite windy, they could have it. I put my hoodie back on and tried to find a large rock to sit in the lee of. SLR guy went to the outlet. On a trail on the opposite bank, I spotted a guy walking west.

I sat there for about an hour, had my lunch, enjoyed my can of beer. I had the lake to myself. Well, almost. SLR guy and the young ladies left within twenty minutes or so. Nobody new had arrived. I kept looking for the guy I spotted on the other side of the lake. Never did spot him until he popped up on my left. It probably took him an hour to circumambulate the lake.

A few minutes into the hike down, we come to the crux: descending the treacherous steep slippery shit. I elected to go down the way I came up, thinking if I didn’t like it, I could always change my mind and go down the dry streambed. I took my time. There were quite a few people working their way up, so I had many excuses to pause. A few of them were more bothered by it than I was.

Each pause allowed me to take in the view. I found it particularly rewarding. It’s too bad we continue to suffer the extreme haze from the west coast wildfires. Looking straight up, the sky was almost its normal deep, deep blue. But looking toward the horizon, all is obscured by a brownish-yellow haze.

When I crossed the isthmus between the lakes on the way up, I didn’t appreciate how many trails there were. On the way down, I explored a little. There really are a lot of trails there. When I went to find the trail down, at least twice I thought I’d gotten onto the trail only to come across a bigger trail.

Finally back on the trail below the twin lakes, I resumed my search for likely routes to Clayton. I think there are a couple of possibilities. One of them caught my eye both times I passed it: I took a photo of it both on my way up and back down.

I’m glad I started as early as I did. It’s a relatively short hike. I made it to the upper lake a minute before 10. If parking wasn’t a consideration, I could arrive two hours later and be at the upper lake for a noon picnic. But it would have been a different experience. Instead of half an hour of solitude, I’d have been in a crowd of dozens.

I keep wondering how so many people are on the trails given the size of the parking lot. There was a lot of traffic on the Crater Lakes trail. I took a quick break at the trail junction and watched a parade of hikers go by. Below the junction with the Forest Lakes trail, it was very nearly a “conga-line hike”. And, back at the parking lot, there are plenty of empty spaces.

Almost forgot to mention: I pulled into my parking spot this morning just as a train emerged from the tunnel. First time I’ve seen one. I hear the exhaust fans on every hike, sometimes twice, and I sometimes hear a train whistle, but it was kind of cool to see one come out of the tunnel.

All in all, another glorious day along the Continental Divide.

Upper Forest Lake

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Back in June, I made my first hike in the James Peak Wilderness with the goal of reaching both Forest Lakes. There was a bit more snow than I was expecting, which gave us minor navigational difficulties and we stopped at the lower lake.

Tuesday, August 31

Guessing that the parking lot at the East Portal trailhead wouldn’t be terribly crowded on a weekday late in the season, I opted for a leisurely start and didn’t leave the house until nearly 7 am, arriving at the trailhead a bit after 8. There was plenty of parking.

The day was cloudless, but not clear: we’re still getting quite a bit of haze from the wildfires on the west coast. Looking straight up, the sky was the usual vivid blue, but visibility toward the horizon was quite limited – hillsides just a mile or so distant were noticeably obscured.

The hike into the upper lake was quite pleasant. I passed one hiker not far from the trailhead and didn’t see anybody else until I was ready to leave the upper lake more than three hours later. I timed it perfectly for my purposes – my visit to the lake coincided with solitude. I had gotten it into my mind that all the trails here were crowded, except for the trails that have been closed for several years.

Upper Forest Lake is, I think, the most scenic of the lakes I’ve so far visited from this trailhead. This lake sits in a bowl beneath a 12,000′ high ridge of the Continental Divide. The slopes are a combination of sparse forest, grassy ramps, and rock outcroppings. There may be a trail around the lake, but if there isn’t, it looks like it is an easy lake to circumnavigate.

The summer season is nearing its end here. All the snow from last winter has melted, with the exception of the last vestiges of a couple of snow cornices. There is very little water flowing into the lake. One or two streambeds are visible due to the dark brown staining from the water that is now a trickle rather than a cascade. Only a few wildflowers survive: quite a few fireweed and the occasional queens crown, but the rest have all lost their petals or turned brown.

Sitting by the lake, I was wondering if there were any fish. The water looked… dead. No aquatic plants, very few insects buzzing above the surface of the water. Finally, I did spot a ten- or twelve-inch greenback cutthroat trout swimming about.

I’ve recently been better about carrying a telephoto zoom lens in case I encounter any wildlife. I decided that as long as I have the lens with me, I won’t spot any game. So I left the lens at home. That didn’t help – wildlife was nowhere to be seen. I continue to carry the GoPro in order to get a timelapse, but yet again the sky was cloudless, making a timelapse pointless. If these are my two biggest problems (and they were), it’s a good hike indeed.

  • Lower Forest Lake
  • Lower Forest Lake
  • Snapped during takeoff…
  • Upper Forest Lake
  • Butterfly
  • Upper Forest Lake
  • Butterfly

I think I’d like to return here again, early in the season. I’m willing to give another mid-June hike a shot now that I have a better idea of the terrain. Even if I lose the trail, I think I can make it to the lake. (On our June hike, we reached the lower lake quite some distance from where the trail reaches the lake.)

Mitchell Lake and Blue Lake

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Continuing this summer’s exploration of alpine lakes of the Front Range of Colorado outside of Rocky Mountain National Park, I decided it was time to take a stab at the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area. Not quite at random, I selected Blue Lake, which has its trailhead in the Brainard Lake Recreation Area.

I hadn’t been to Brainard Lake before. Just about everybody I know who does any hiking at all has been there, so it’s about time I joined the club.

Wednesday, August 25

Julie joined me for this hike. She said six miles or so is her limit. The trail guide tells me that it’s a 5.1 mile round trip from the trailhead to Blue Lake and back, with only about 830′ of climb. I won’t call it an “ideal fit”, given that it’s pretty much at her limit. She tells me she’s never been to Brainard Lake, either, so a new experience for both of us.

We left my house shortly after 7am, and Google directed us up Lee Hill Drive from north Boulder. I’ve never been on this road before, so another plus. It turns out that Lee Hill Drive connects with Left Hand Canyon Drive. Not long ago, I took Left Hand Canyon Drive as a detour when Boulder Canyon was closed for construction. I didn’t realize until now, that on that day, I turned off Left Hand Canyon Drive onto James Canyon Drive, which turns into a dirt road. Left Hand Canyon Drive remains paved all the way to its junction with the Peak to Peak Highway at the metropolis of Ward.

The entrance to Brainard Lake Recreation Area is about a hundred yards north of Ward (which isn’t really visible from the Peak to Peak). It, also, is a nice paved road. So when I make a return visit to Brainard, I can drive the Lotus if I want.

We couldn’t help but notice the signs that say “Reservation Required”. This is where I admit to a failure to properly research our visit. I didn’t visit Brainard’s Forest Service website. I looked at my usual list of sites, such as ProTrails. I did find some conflicting information. One site said there was a ten-dollar entrance fee. Another said it was eleven dollars. Neither said reservations were required.

We arrived at the entrance station and greeted the ranger. “Do you have a reservation?” We did not. “Reservations are required, and they’re sold out months in advance! But I do have a few left. I can let you park in the Brainard day-use area.” We told him we were going to hike to Blue Lake. “I can’t get you into that parking area, it’s been sold out for months.” When he handed me the pass, I asked about the fee. “It’s on me today. Pay me back by having a good time!”

As it turns out, the entrance fee was neither $10 nor $11 but $14. It’s a good thing he let us in gratis, as I only had $11 on me. (Yeah, he probably could have taken a credit card.)

Brainard is using a timed-entry pass system very much like RMNP. When I got home and visited the official site, I found that some passes are still available for the dates that have been released, but just a few, and just late in the day. None would be of any use to me.

We parked in the designated lot and found the trail that leads from there to the parking lot and trailhead we really wanted to use. This adds fifteen minutes each way to the hike, so maybe another mile round trip. So now we’re pushing Julie’s limits a bit more. Oh well.

I couldn’t help but notice that, for a place that’s been sold out for months, there were very few cars. The lot where we parked was perhaps 20% full and the lot at the Mitchell Lake trailhead was about a quarter full. I guessed that, by the time we got back, we’d see full parking lots.

The trail works its way through the valley between Mount Audubon (13,229′) on the north and Little Pawnee Peak (12,466′) on the south. Mount Toll (12,979′), Paiute Peak (13,088′), and Pawnee Peak (12,943′) are at the head of the valley. Blue Lake is a fairly large lake, and the trail officially ends there. There is another, higher, lake. It’s not named on any of the maps I use, but I’ve heard it called either Little Blue Lake or Upper Blue Lake. My plan was to make it to the upper lake while Julie enjoyed the views at Blue Lake.

To get to Blue Lake, you start at the Mitchell Lake trailhead. Mitchell Lake is a bit less than a mile from the trailhead, and it’s a pretty easy hike. The trail is well-maintained, not terribly rocky, and climbs only about 200′.

Not long after passing Mitchell Lake, the trail reaches a point that overlooks the lake and the pond that’s adjacent to it on the east. This overlook is roughly where you come to the first of the ponds, this one to the north of the trail. I couldn’t help but notice that the entire slope of Mount Audubon, stretching east/west for more than a mile, is comprised of talus and/or scree. I’ve probably seen more talus than this on one hillside, but if I have, I can’t think of where I’ve seen it. I found it to be a remarkable amount of talus.

The outlet of Blue Lake is one of the feeders of Mitchell Lake, but the trail doesn’t run along the stream. I’d say that the stream is visible for most of the hike between the two lakes, but that’s not exactly true: the terrain is fairly flat here, and the stream is overgrown by willow, so you can’t really see much of it.

And, being fairly flat, there are four or five unnamed ponds along the way. This looks like ideal moose territory to me. And, overlooking the second of these ponds, we heard the snort of an animal. It was loud enough that the beast couldn’t have been very far away. Julie wondered if it might be a bear; I suggested it was probably a moose. Neither of us spotted either a bear or a moose. A few minutes later, we heard another snort. Still we couldn’t find the creature.

Nearing Blue Lake, we came across a couple of hikers asking if we’d seen the moose. Actually, this happened several times throughout the day. We’d meet hikers who asked if we’d seen the moose. One group saw two big bulls. Another saw a cow and calf. We were about the only ones who hadn’t seen moose, even though we were within earshot of their snorts. So it goes.

In due time, we reached Blue Lake, where I left Julie. The trail skirts the northern shore of the lake, climbing slightly as it goes west. The guide at ProTrails tells me, “Here the maintained trail ends, but a fairly intuitive route continues up the north shore to Upper Blue Lake.” I beg to differ. Before long, I reached a steep section of very loose footing. I nearly turned around here. I passed this bit, continuing the climb. Before long, the trail disappeared completely. Nothing intuitively obvious here.

If the trail would have been better (or more obvious), I’d have continued. If I’d have been hiking with somebody to help with route selection, I’d have continued. But alone, with no trail, I figured it would take longer than I wanted to make Julie wait for me. So I turned around.

On my way back down, I met two pairs of hikers who were thinking they’d try to reach the upper lake as well. It wasn’t my intention, but both turned around after talking to me. The first pair told me they didn’t have any off-trail experience. The second pair turned around after I pointed out the section with the loose footing. I really didn’t mean to be so discouraging.

  • Brainard Lake
  • Mitchell Lake pano
  • Mitchell Lake and Mount Audubon
  • Overlooking Mitchell Lake
  • Pond and Talus Slope
  • Moose territory!
  • Approach to Blue Lake
  • Blue Lake pano
  • Blue Lake

After our picnic lunch, we headed back, all the while on the lookout for moose. There was a bit more traffic on the trail than we saw on the way up, but I would not call this a crowded trail at all.

Back at the Mitchell Lake trailhead, we saw a nearly empty parking lot. And the lot we were parked in was also not more than a quarter or a third full. Here at Brainard, the timed-entry pass system is certainly keeping the crowds down.

There are a couple more trails I’d like to hike here, so I’ll definitely be back for further visits.

It was a nice, easy hike, not too crowded. And the weather was pretty much ideal – the haze we’ve experienced the last month or so from the wildfires on the west coast was not in evidence. Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Heart Lake

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Of the five hikes I figured it would take to reach all the named lakes in James Peak Wilderness, the hike to Heart Lake is the southernmost and the longest. It may also be the most crowded. Searching online sources for information about this hike yields a variety of conflicting information. One site says it’s 8.7 miles (round trip) to Heart Lake, another says 9.7 miles. Each gives a different number for elevation gain. I’m going with 8.8 miles and 2,061′ (net).

Saturday, August 7

This may not be the best day for a hike. In one way, it may be the worst. We’re getting the full effect of the smoke from the wildfires on the west coast. Today, according to the local news, Denver had the worst air quality of anywhere in the world. Normally, the sun is far too bright to look directly at even a few minutes after it rises. But the last few days, it was an orange disk, easily looked at. And the last few days were clear compared to today.

Gordon and Eric went with me. I picked them up at the little park and ride at the intersection of highways 72 and 93. When we passed through one of the last meadows before reaching the parking lot at the trailhead, several cars were stopped on the road. The occupants were watching a moose that was ambling eastward near the edge of the meadow. A few yards farther up the road, we spotted two deer, antlers in velvet, crossing the road. As it turns out, these three were the only large animals we spotted all day.

Arriving at the trailhead, even though we were nearly an hour earlier than I was two weeks ago, again the parking lot was nearly full. It was a bit breezy, and a bit on the chilly side. I carry a light rain jacket in my pack, but there’s not enough room for me to carry anything heavier, so I almost decided to take my hoodie off and leave it in the car. But I made a sound choice, and kept it on, figuring I’d take it off before long and end up spending the day with it tied around my waist.

Visibility was very bad. I couldn’t even tell how cloudy it was. Certainly, there were clouds. The very tops of a few peaks were shrouded, but aside from that, the sky was filled with a haze somewhere between orange and brown. I don’t think we could see anything more than about three miles away. At least it didn’t smell of smoke.

I’d say that the trail to Heart Lake is the main trail through the Wilderness. The trails to all the other lakes here are spurs off this trail. In turn, we arrive at the junctions with trails to Forest Lakes, Crater Lakes, and Clayton Lake. (Arapaho Lakes are reached via a spur trail off the Forest Lakes trail.) I chatted with a volunteer later in the day who told me that the Arapaho Lakes trail was “closed” in 2008, and the Clayton Lake trail quite some time before that. I asked him specifically about Clayton Lake. He said the route of the former trail is pretty rough and that a better way is to go to Crater Lakes and contour around a ridge to Clayton Lake. So I guess I’ll visit Crater Lakes before I make any attempt on Clayton (and the Iceberg Lakes above it).

From the junction with the Forest Lakes trail to Rogers Pass Lake, the hike is a pleasant walk through forest. It runs alongside (or, at least, never far from) South Boulder Creek and never gets very steep. There are a number of passages where we had a bit of difficulty getting through mud bogs, particularly as a backpacker told me it had rained for three hours last night.

Just before I met that backpacker, I passed a group of campers. Their tents were several yards off the trail on one side and they were grouped together on the other side. At first, I thought they had a radio on. (Okay, these days probably not a radio. But some music replay device.) But it was no radio: they were in a circle, holding songbooks and singing. Two of them had small drums. That was an interesting place for a recital. As a some-times backpacker, I couldn’t help but wonder how much the drums weighed.

Rogers Pass Lake

We arrived at James Pass Lake (on some maps, I see it called James Peak Lake) at 9:30. There were dozens of people there, some who had passed us on the trail, most who had camped there.

From James Pass Lake, the trail crosses a short ridge to reach Heart Lake. Both lakes feature grassy shores and little to no talus and only sparse willow, so they could be fairly easily circumnavigated. This also means that there is precious little shelter from the wind.

Heart Lake

I was glad I didn’t leave my hoodie in the car. Not only had I not taken it off yet, but by the time we arrived at Heart Lake, I was considering digging my light rain jacket out of the pack so I could add another layer.

The trail deposits us on the windswept south side of the lake. We agreed that it wasn’t a very pleasant place for a picnic given the current conditions, so we decided to work our way around the east shore, past the outlet, and into a small copse of krummholz. Even here, it was a bit on the blustery side. We chowed down and when finished, didn’t dilly-dally. We hit the trail for the hike out.

  • Crumbling infrastructure
  • Haystack Mtn above the far shore of Rogers Pass Lake
  • Queen’s Crown
  • James Peak almost peeking out of clouds behind Haystack Mtn
  • Heart Lake and Heartbeat Peak
  • Fireweed

Normally, Gordon is a much faster hiker than I am and no matter how much I try to keep up a good pace, he’s right behind me. By now, though, my legs were feeling a bit sore so I didn’t try very hard to keep up a good pace. Gordon, though, wasn’t close behind. I didn’t see him again until we were back at the trailhead. He showed up at the car with a phone full of mushroom pictures. On my hike to Arapaho Lakes, I took about a dozen fungus photos, thinking I’d spotted a nice variety. Gordon had at least a hundred pictures, and not too many were duplicates. Clearly, he was paying much more attention to the fungus among us than I was.

When I encounter a small number of hikers on the trail, it’s easy to keep track. On the hike to Arapaho Lakes, I met four other hikers when I was off the main trail. Today, I certainly would have lost track. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say I saw on the order of 300 other hikers. This is about a nine-mile hike, so it’s not quite a “conga line hike”, but it’s close.

I asked some hikers I met at the Crater Lakes junction how crowded that trail was. “It’s pretty crowded.” I’m not sure I’ll do another James Peak Wilderness hike this season, but if I do, I’ll find out just how crowded the Crater Lakes trail is.

So, on a day where the air quality had the weather service telling people to stay indoors and not to exert themselves, where the haze made for some of the worst visibility I’ve ever encountered (except when raining or snowing) and resulting in some really poor photos, hiking crowded trails, and dealing with a cold wind, you might think it wasn’t any fun. But it was a good day.

Arapaho Lakes

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Saturday, July 24

For my second visit to James Peak Wilderness, I chose Arapaho Lakes.

Sometime not long ago, the trail to Arapaho Lakes was maintained. From what I understand, there used to be a sign at the trail junction, and a bridge across Arapaho Creek. Neither the sign nor the bridge exists, and I could see no evidence that a bridge was ever there. But judging by the amount and age of deadfall, I’d guess maintenance stopped six to ten years ago. Perhaps the bridge was taken out in the flood of 2013 and that contributed to the decision to stop maintaining the trail?

I arrived at the parking lot a few minutes before 8 am. This was about half an hour later than I’d planned. For the last mile or two on the road, I was followed by three other vehicles. When I arrived at the parking lot, there were only two spots left, and I’m not really sure they were spots. If I’d have been at the end of the line rather than the front, I’d have had nowhere to park. That’ll teach me to be late out the gate for hikes here.

The first two miles or so of trail is also the way to Forest Lakes. The route splits not far after the bridge over Arapaho Creek. Last time, I reported that the railing was pretty sketchy and I’m happy to say they’ve repaired it nicely. From this bridge, I kept an eye out for anything that looks like a blocked-off trail. Generally, it’s a few limbs on the ground, a visual fence. After about five minutes, I found the place.

The trail was quite clear the first few yards, but it quickly led down to a sizeable marsh. I spotted a faint trail a bit to the right, staying on higher, drier, ground. It’s not too hard to follow but requires some attention. This seems to be a detour. It clearly was never a maintained trail. I’m sure that by September, there’d be no marsh, rendering this detour unnecessary.

Back on the trail that used to be maintained, the walking is easy except for an occasional tree trunk across the trail. Less than half a mile off the Forest Lakes trail, we arrive (again) at Arapaho Creek. I spotted a trail on the opposite bank. (I now think this is the site of the former bridge.) I didn’t want to cross here, so I kept going on the trail. According to the CalTopo map, if you stayed on this side of the creek the trail would take you to the outlet of lower Forest Lake. But this trail dumped me into another marsh.

I plowed through to the next clump of trees upstream. By this time, I was above the confluence of Arapaho Creek and the outlet of Forest Lakes. I searched for a crossing here. It didn’t take long, but once I was across, I knew I’d have a short bushwhack. There was another small stream between the two outlet streams, so I ended up with three crossings total rather than the one where I’m guessing the bridge formerly stood.

A few yards after my third crossing, Arapaho Creek, I was back on the trail. I regained the trail at the base of a fairly steep climb: 500 feet up in 1500 feet to the west. None of this was treacherous. The footing was generally good; there were lots of roots that made for nice steps. In places, it’s a lot like climbing stairs. The good thing is, you’re climbing pretty much adjacent to the creek. You don’t always see the creek, but when you do, it’s a falls or a cascade. I enjoyed several short pauses to take in a few breaths and the spectacle of the falling water.

As soon as we’re out of the forest, the trail nearly levels off. The expansive view appears as if a curtain had opened. We’re above 10,800′ elevation here. I was taking my time when a hiker and his dog passed me. He was the first hiker I saw in quite a while. I was a bit surprised to see somebody; I was beginning to think I had the place to myself (other than the mosquitoes).

I did see a few fresh-looking boot prints. I’m guessing it rained yesterday afternoon or last night. The prints didn’t look to me like they’d been rained on. I saw at least one print heading in each direction, so I’m guessing somebody has already made the round-trip this morning.

The lakes lie at about 11,150′ above sea level. The smaller, western one is four feet higher than the larger, eastern one. The southern bank is grassy, and the grass is heavily sprinkled with wildflowers. The north shore is a mix of rocks and willow and krummholz. The trail skirts the south side, petering out before reaching the western end of the lake. Any route generally to the west from here will get you to the eastern shore of the upper lake.

Near the outlet of the lower lake

The sky was a bit hazy due to some combination of humidity and the smoke from West Coast fires. It wasn’t just hazy, it was also mostly cloudy. Here at the lake, it was windy. There’s nothing resembling shelter here. And because it’s not a nice, bright, sunny day, it’s a bit on the chilly side. Unusually, the wind was from the east. There were a couple of layers of clouds. The lower clouds were pushed on that easterly wind towards the divide. They moved so fast it was as if you’re watching a time-lapse. A few small clouds were higher. They moved slowly in nearly the opposite direction.

I sat there, eating my picnic, watching the clouds fly by, listening to the squirrels and marmots chirping and barking, for forty-five minutes. When I stood up to leave, I saw another hiker a couple of hundred yards away, hiking away from me. She couldn’t have been here long; she didn’t come to the second lake.

On the way down, I stopped at one of the many scenic spots and took a few photos. The man and his dog passed me again. This time we chatted. He’s getting married in Estes Park in a few weeks, then he and his bride will hike to the summit of Longs Peak. We chatted about hiking in RoMo and about the fire damage and trail closures. This was his first hike in James Peak. We agreed that this area is a nice Plan B when you can’t hike in the Park.

  • Dew drop in…
  • Elephant’s Heads
  • Island in the stream
  • The lower lake
  • The upper lake
  • King’s Crown
  • Pollination action

As to crossing the river on the way down, I had a bit of an internal argument. My intention was to follow the trail to its end where the former bridge was to verify whether there’s an easier crossing. “What if I can’t find a good place to cross?” That’s a stupid question: I’ve proved I can find a crossing. “What if I can’t find the same crossing point?” What’s with the stupid questions? I found that crossing, I can find another.

I went to the end of the trail. I was back at the place I didn’t cross on the way up. I spent some time judging whether I could cross. Any potential crossing involved a step or two in water deeper than my boot tops. I could take my boots off and wade, but without trek poles, I was concerned about slipping. I decided to backtrack and cross the way I did in the morning. I quickly found two of my three crossing points but for the third, I chose a place that was slightly inferior to my route in the morning.

Just before regaining the Forest Lakes trail, I ran into two more hikers. I mentioned the stream crossing. One responded, “I’m not worried, I’m wearing boots.” These were the third and fourth people I encountered in four hours, but these guys hardly count, as I was nearly back to the crowded trail anyway. Not total solitude, but damn near. Not bad for a Sunday.

Back on the Forest Lakes trail, from the bridge with the repaired handrail back to the parking lot it was pretty busy. Not “conga line hike” busy, but I never went more than a few minutes without encountering other hikers. Individuals (with dogs), pairs (with or without dogs), large groups (all with dogs).

Dogs aren’t allowed on the trails in RMNP, so I’m not accustomed to seeing them. I’m surprised by the number of dogs. All along the trail are little plastic bags of, presumably, dog poo. I’m hoping that they were left beside the trail by hikers and their dogs going up the trail and they’ll be collected by those same hikers on their way out.

On today’s episode of “What did I forget?” we have a map and mosquito spray. Last night, getting into bed, I thought “I need to print a map in the morning. And I should take the bug spray with me” Nope, didn’t happen. I wasn’t concerned about being mapless, though; I’ve been studying the map for some time. But I sorely missed the mosquito repellent.

Also on the list: sunscreen. I didn’t forget to take it, but I didn’t remember to apply it until I was nearly back to the main trail. “Better late than never” doesn’t always include sunscreen. Luckily, I emerged unburnt.

I really enjoyed the hike. It’s not too long, at 7.1 miles round trip. It does have a very strenuous section in the middle, a stream crossing (or three), and some route-finding skills come in handy. I didn’t quite have the place to myself, but that might be a different story on a weekday.

In addition to the open views above treeline, and the extended climb alongside the falling water, there was an abundance of wildflowers. Blues and yellows in the lower elevations, reds and oranges and violets up higher. I saw only a few columbines, all fairly low. One of my new favorites, Elephant’s Heads, is quite common here. There is also a profusion of mushrooms.

It was a good day.