LUG 2026 – Day 2

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Friday, September 25

The hotel we’re staying in doesn’t offer a Continental breakfast, but they do have a Starbucks in the lobby. The only thing they offer a non-coffee drinker and someone trying not to eat sugary foods is a couple of bagels: plain or everything. In search of better options, I walked a couple of blocks to the Corner Bakery Cafe. Sadly, the options were the same, unless I wanted a sit-down breakfast. So, yeah, I ended up with an overpriced plain bagel.

Today, the plan is to head to Helper, UT, to have our little car show and lunch. It’s a two-hour drive using the fastest route. That fastest route involves interstate highways, and I’m not alone in my dislike for these roads. Since we’re trying to get something like 160 cars from here to there, there was a choice between several groups taking different routes. I decided to travel with the Lotus Colorado group.

Unfortunately, when I pulled out of the hotel parking lot, my misfire got much worse. I drove down to the main drag and just missed the green light. This was good, as there was no way I’d drive it for the 5+ hour round trip with it running like this. When the light turned green, I made a U-turn and went back to the hotel parking lot. By the time I parked it, the check engine light was flashing. I’ve never seen that before. Not a good sign.

With an undrivable car, I won’t be able to partake in most of the activities that I came here to do. I missed our takeover of the town of Helping. I won’t be able to join any of the organized drives tomorrow, the funkhana on Sunday, or the track day on Monday. And, frankly, I’ll be looking for a way to get the car to the local dealer and book a flight back home.

Long-time readers may think this sounds familiar. I had a check engine light the night before my track day at Laguna Seca and an electrical problem on my first Atlanta trip that caused me to cancel my two-day event at Barber Motorsports Park.

The difference this time is that Lotus Cars USA has their three top experts on my car at the event. One of them is Ryan, who has done a lot of work on my car, including fixing the short that wrecked my Atlanta trip. I am confident that Ryan and his colleagues will be able to diagnose the issue and, if I’m lucky, get it resolved, too.

So, I texted Ryan to see if he went to Helper or if he’s somewhere around the hotel. The answer was neither. He responded a couple of hours later, saying that he and his family had just crossed the border into Utah and would arrive at the hotel a few hours later, but wouldn’t be able to look at the car until sometime tomorrow.

Normally, I’d have a book with me. After I lugged a book around France and didn’t even read it on the plane, I didn’t bother bringing one on this trip. When would I have time to read? Every time I have a problem on one of my trips, I end up adding something to the toolbox. I won’t put it in the toolbox, but I’ll be sure to always be prepared to have time to kill. Ahem.

The hotel is practically on the University of Utah’s campus. Two medical school buildings are next door. Surely there’s a bookstore within walking distance. My Navigator friend suggested the bookstore on campus, showing me a photo of a shelf of books. It’s a 29-minute walk. Part of the walk is along a six-lane road with no sidewalk. But enough people go this way that there’s a trail. When I get to a sidewalk, there’s a crossing button I need to press to light up the sign so drivers won’t kill me in the crosswalk. I push the button three times, but it doesn’t work.

To get to the bookstore, I walk past the library. It’s the J. Willard Marriott Library. I was surprised it was named for somebody I recognized and had no idea he had connections to this area. I have no idea who the Norlin was that the CU library is named for.

Anyway, I arrive at the store. It’s two stories, with the ground floor completely filled with UU merch. Shirts, hats, jerseys, jackets, hoodies. A sign by the stairs says that book packages can be collected upstairs. Naturally, I go upstairs. I’m guessing students order online whatever few books they need dead-tree versions of and pick them up here. So much for buying a book.

For lunch, I had the challenge of locating a deli Google said was nearby. As in, practically across the street in one of the medical office buildings. Google messed with me on this one. In pedestrian mode, mind you, it directed me through the parking lot of the office building and into an entrance. I did spot a sign for the Deli, but it just had an arrow. Google did say that it was on the second floor, so I went up the stairs. This led me into a warren of offices. I was clearly not in a public space. After several turns, I managed to exit from the back, as the building is built on a hill, and the second floor is the ground floor in the back. I’m about to give up when I spot it. Navigator led me on the worst possible path to get a sandwich. What’s it got against me?

I was excited to see they served breakfast, too. A nice breakfast burrito would be a nice step up from a plain bagel. Unfortunately, they’re only open on weekdays. They cater to the office workers in the area, and there’s nothing else to bring traffic here. Oh well. Bagels it is.

I counted six cars in the parking lot when I got back from lunch. The place was deserted. Or, nearly so. I helped a guy get a go-kart from his minivan to the lobby outside the banquet room for display. Across the parking lot, over the lawn, through the double doors, and next to the staircase. It’s a Lotus go-kart. Built in Italy, sold across Europe, but only a handful made it to America.

For dinner, the eternal question: the beef or the chicken? Our speaker was Tony Shute, who led the development of the Elise, Exige, and variants. At our table, we couldn’t see the slideshow, and there was a lot of noise behind us, making him difficult to hear. On top of that, he was a soft-spoken guy. I moved to another part of the room to see the slides, but had just as much noise. So it goes.

To top off the evening, we had the awards presentation from the day in Helper. Lotus Colorado outperformed. We won exactly a third of the awards, but we’re more like a fifth of the cars.

photo by Zachary Friss

LUG 2026 – Day 1

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Every year in September, Lotus Ltd., the national club for Lotus owners, holds the Lotus Owners Gathering, or LOG. Historically, Lotus Ltd. has been, shall we say, East Coast-centric. Since I’ve been in the club, I think only four LOGs have been west of the Mississippi. Meanwhile, the Golden Gate Lotus Club and other clubs hold a West Coast Lotus Meet (WCLM), generally every other year, also around this time. As long as I’ve had the Lotus, I’ve had the sense that the two organizations may have had issues other than geographic.

It may be that relations have thawed. The title of this post does not have a typo. This year’s get-together is the Lotus United Gathering, which is what you get when Lotus Ltd. and the Golden Gate Lotus Club work together. This does not mean we won’t have both a LOG and a WCLM in the same year. The United States is a big place, and it takes a special kind of maniac to want to drive these cars three or four thousand miles (or more) in a week.

For LUG 2026, the setting is the same as LOG 40: Salt Lake City. On tap for the trip are a drive to Helper, UT for our concours; a drive to a “ghost” town (which I saw last time, so I’ll replace with an alternate); a “funkhana” (a low-speed, light-hearted obstacle course); a track day; and, on the drive home, a hike to Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs.

Thursday, September 24

My phone’s navigation app likes to mess with me. In Death Valley, it had me going down a dirt road in the dark. It wants me to take shortcuts to bypass towns, so I miss all the restaurants and gas stations. In Missouri, it flat-out lied to me. It said the nearest gas station was 19 miles away, but at the next stop sign, I spotted one a quarter of a mile down the crossroad. I hate interstates, so I often set it to avoid highways. It directed me to a ferry across the Ohio River that operated twice a day. Once, in Tennessee, when I was on the Interstate, in a Biblical rainstorm, it had me exit the Interstate and drive a seven-mile loop, only to get back on the Interstate at the same exit1. I don’t know what I did to piss it off.

Today I decided I’d put in the address of the hotel and hit Start, then ignore whatever it said for half the day. I know it’ll want me to take I-25 to I-80, and that’s the last route I want to take. My plan was I-70 to Silverthorne, then CO 9 to US 40. I wondered how long the app would keep telling me to turn around. It gave up around Colfax. In response, it sent me, and, seemingly, dozens of other cars, on a detour around congestion on the Interstate. It took me four cycles to get through one stoplight. I’d have rather stayed on I-70. Yeah, yeah, I should have ignored it like I said I would.

Colorado Highway 9 passes by Green Mountain Reservoir. There isn’t any water in it. I don’t mean it was low. The only water in it was a largish puddle at the dam. After the junction with US 40 in Kremmling, the road passes Wolford Mountain Reservoir. This is also dry. It’s not uncommon over the years to see reservoirs quite low; this was shocking.

By now, I had finally bent the navigation app to my will2. Almost. It tried to pull the “shortcut around the town” stunt in Vernal and cheat me out of lunch. This great time-saving manoeuvre was not a time-saver because two oversized loads blocked the intersection for three cycles of the light. When I could finally make a right turn on red to grab a sandwich at Jimmy John’s, I sent the navigator app into a paroxysm of rerouting beeps.

At Duchesne, the unexpected happened. Navigator sent me onto Utah routes to bypass Strawberry and Heber City; backroads to within a few miles of I-80. Utah Route 35 is a lovely road with sweeping turns, almost no traffic, and pleasant mountain scenery. At one point, I came across a herd of sheep on the road, directed by three dogs, but no human I could see. The dogs had their charges across the road in no time.

Back in civilization, in Kamas, I came within a hundred yards of joining a group of Lotus, but my low fuel light came on, and I stopped to refuel. I gassed up in Kremmling, 338 miles earlier. It was only another 38 miles to the hotel. I’d have made it with more than a gallon left in the tank – I got 41.3 miles to the gallon on that tank.

Good fuel economy despite the car not running quite right. In the wake of the engine swap, I was getting occasional check engine lights for misfire codes. Last week, Michael and I replaced the spark plugs and ignition coils. But now the misfires are no longer occasional. The idle is very rough, but it never stalled. And at low RPMs, the misfire was quite noticeable.

I pulled into the hotel parking lot a few minutes after 5, a bit over nine hours of travel time. I got checked in with the hotel and got checked in with LUG, just in time to have dinner and a couple of beers with other Lotus enthusiasts.

  1. In its defense, it was the most intense part of the storm, and I pulled into a parking lot for a few minutes when it started to hail. The Interstate would have been crazy, so the detour was a good thing. ↩︎
  2. Not really. By now, this was the only route option until close to SLC. ↩︎

A Different Shelf Lake

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I’ve often joked that it’s hard to name lakes. On the East Inlet Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, you can visit five lakes: Lone Pine Lake, Lake Verna, Spirit Lake, Fourth Lake, and Fifth Lake. It was too hard to name those last two, so they punted. But it’s more than that. Although this is the only Lake Verna in the US, there are 31 Spirit Lakes, a dozen Lone Pine Lakes, a slew of Fourth Lakes, eleven Fifth Lakes (and a Lake Fifth).

In Rocky Mountain National Park alone, there’s a Lake Irene and an Irene Lake. There’s also a Solitude Lake and a Lake Solitude. I’ve hiked to Crater Lake in Indian Peaks Wilderness and Crater Lakes in James Peak Wilderness. Don’t get me started on Bear Lake: there are seven in Colorado and nearly two hundred nationwide.

As to Shelf Lake, there are two in Colorado and eleven total. I’ve been to the Shelf Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park a couple of times. The Shelf Lake that’s the destination for my next hike is in Clear Creek County, on a shelf 900 feet below the summit of Decatur Mountain.

Saturday, September 11

The trailhead is on Upper Geneva Road, off the north side of Guanella Pass. It’s about three and a half miles up a dirt road. The road starts off pretty good, but steadily gets rougher. It doesn’t require 4-wheel-drive, but ground clearance is a must. The parking lot holds a bit more than a dozen vehicles, and there’s room for another dozen in an adjacent overflow area. I arrived at 8:45 and got one of the last spots.

The hike is only three and a half miles, but with the trailhead at 10,000′ and the lake at 12,000′, the air is a bit thin the whole time, and about a third of it is above treeline.

About a mile into the hike is the first steep climb, and this is rewarded with a clear view of the valley below. Along the trail, there is the occasional aspen grove. Today, most of them are still green, or just getting a tinge of yellow. There was only one grove that was fully gold.

The trail leaves the forest and crosses the main stream, revealing the high, broad valley between Decatur and Square Top. Much like the other high valleys in the vicinity, this one is a sea of willow. The trail cuts a few long, narrow paths through the willow, at times nearly head-high. In these sections, the trail is not much more than shoulder-wide, and you hear oncoming hikers before you see them.

After the willow, the trail reaches the base of the shelf that contains the lake for the final steep lift to the lake.

The hike to Shelf Lake isn’t a “conga line” hike, but the only destination for people who parked at the trailhead is this lake, so counting the cars at the trailhead should give you a good idea of how many people you’ll encounter. I stayed at the lake for about an hour, and there were never fewer than half a dozen people there. Just about everybody I came across had either a dog or a fishing pole, and many had both.

Unfortunately, I managed to forget to bring the Insta360, so no timelapse video for this one. So it goes.

It’s a pleasant hike, not too strenuous, not too long. The weather was nice, and it was an enjoyable way to spend the day. I probably won’t return to Shelf Lake, given my compulsion to always hike to lakes I haven’t visited before, but I hope to return to the vicinity again and get a more distant view of it.

During my map study in preparation for this hike, it seemed to me that I might consider hiking over the pass between Square Top and Argentine Peak to reach Murray Reservoir and Silver Dollar Lake. It’s at 13,000′, but that’s only 3,000′ higher than the trailhead. In the final climb to Shelf Lake, I paused several times to look at this ridge. The lower, shallower part of the climb is mostly a matter of navigating the willow. The upper, steeper part is grassy ramps. It looks pretty straightforward. Obviously, it requires two cars, so I can’t do it solo.

An alternative would be to start from the parking lot at the summit of the Guanella Pass. A trail from there goes to the summit of Square Top and crosses the crest of this ridge. This point-to-point hike would be a bit less than seven miles, with about 2,000′ of elevation gain.

National Museum of WWII Aviation

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Friday, September 4

I’m a sucker for a nice airplane museum.

I’ve been meaning to visit this one for years. I finally found an excuse to do it. I had to go down to Colorado Springs for some Lotus club business, and once that was done, I grabbed some lunch and a beer at Wackadoo Brewing Company (pepperoni pizza and a pint of Pucker Up Sour – a pineapple mango sour), then headed over to the museum.

I took photos of all the planes, but I won’t bore you with them here. If you’re interested in aircraft, particularly American planes that saw service in the Second World War, you should just visit yourself.

What fascinated me most was that all the aircraft in the collection (or almost all of them) are operational. Every one of these planes has an oil pan underneath its engines, collecting any drips. Warbirds of this era are rare. I had the impression that the ones still airworthy had survived not only combat, but the scrapheap. Today, I learned that my impression was incorrect.

I’ve been fascinated by YouTube videos of automobile restorations. I’m also addicted to a YouTube channel that features restorations of World War II tanks. Airplane restorations are a thing, too. But there are a few differences. For cars, unless it’s a very rare car, people can find parts at junkyards or even purchase “new old stock” parts (parts manufactured when the cars were made, but sat in warehouses since then). It’s harder to get parts for your vintage tanks. Who has parts for World War II German tanks? You probably can’t find that Maybach V-12 engine for the Tiger tank, but does it matter if you replace it with a Caterpillar diesel?

But aircraft restorations? Not really the same. First of all, if you’re going to fly your plane, it has to pass FAA inspections. This is a non-trivial thing. And, considering the source material for many of these planes, it borders on miraculous that they get restored.

One of the planes (a Grumman F3F-2) was crashed into a mountain on Maui in June of 1941, recovered from the crash site in the 1980s, and restored to flyable condition. An SB2C Helldiver was recovered from Lake Washington. They have a P-47D that was buried on Papua New Guinea in 1945 and recovered in 1990 that’s slated for restoration soon. Seeing the current state of the P-47, I have a hard time imagining it flying.

The museum doesn’t do their own restoration or service work. In a hangar next door is an outfit called Westpac. They perform restoration work, including some highly specialized tasks. The old propellers are precision devices with moving internal parts. Nobody makes them any longer, and parts can’t be found, so Westpac has their own propeller shop.

Of course, they also do all sorts of metalwork. They can’t just pop down to the Republic dealer and find a new cowling for their P-47 restoration. They need to fabricate all the parts themselves. They have managed to obtain many of the original plans for these craft, and their machine shop has all the equipment: English wheels, brakes, anvils, and so on. And it’s not just any such equipment, but of the same vintage as the planes being restored. They sourced their equipment from the old factories in Southern California.

During these extreme restorations, they often cannot use the original material. But nothing gets wasted here. They have volunteers who work in their “Alchemy Department”. Here, artisans take the scraps not destined for FAA-certified airships and make trinkets that are sold in the gift shop. You can find clocks made with the skin of an old bomber, tables that feature cylinders from old radial airplane engines, and odd devices that dispense potent potables (sorry, I didn’t snap any pics in the gift shop).

Last but not least, they have a number of simulators guests can try out. One of them is a biplane flight simulator. No, you don’t sit down at a desk with a toy joystick; you sit in the cockpit of a biplane and work the real controls. Push the joystick to the left and watch the ailerons on the wings move. Kick the rudder pedals, and the rudder moves. Yes, there are computer monitors as well, and the gauges on screen match the layout of the gauges in the cockpit. You won’t find this simulator anywhere else!

  • Oil pan under B-25 engine
  • P-47 D pending restoration
  • Damaged propellers that aren’t junk!
  • Wings pending restoration
  • Original plans, enlarge to actual size
  • Fuselage under reconstruction
  • Westpac metal shop

Timber Lake

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Monday, August 31

For this week’s hike, I managed to overcome my compulsion to visit a lake I’ve never been to before and returned to Timber Lake.

Timber Lake, with a surface area of about seven acres, sits in the morning’s shadow of Mt. Ida at a little over 11,000′ elevation. I was last here back in 2015. I gave a pretty good description of the trail then, so won’t repeat it.

The trail is your basic forest trail. Signs along the trail say the lake is 4.4 miles from the trailhead, but Caltopo maps reckons it at 5 miles. There aren’t any outstanding views on the way to the lake. My wife would probably describe it as “just another trail to just another lake.”

There is one outstanding feature of this trail, though. That’s the landslide area. The landslide happened during the 2013 floods. Locals will recall that just about every road into the mountains between I-70 and the Wyoming border was washed out. At the same time, there was a massive landslide on Twin Sisters.

When I hiked here in 2015, the landslide area was closed off – signs and orange tape directing hikers to detour above the slide. Now, there’s just a warning sign on each side of the slide area. The detour is still obvious on the west side of the slide, but I didn’t spot it on the east side. Judging from the state of the trail (not grown over at all, and with fresh boot prints), I’d guess very few people take the detour. The warning signs urge caution whether you cross the slide area or detour above it.

The slide area isn’t as big as I thought it was when I was here before. I counted 135 paces between the two signs, and only about two-thirds of that distance is the slide itself. The slide on Twin Sisters is an order of magnitude larger.

Erosion isn’t a topic I discuss very often with other folks. I suspect most people think of it as how rivers and streams wear away mountains. That’s true to a point, but it takes the normal flow of water (and wind) a very long time to effect change. That sort of erosion is ubiquitous, inexorable, and slow. Floods, like those in this area in 2013, or those like the failure of the Lawn Lake dam, or the slide in Chaos Canyon that turned the water of Lake Haiyaha turquoise, make the big changes. A flood can move a 50-ton boulder downstream a mile, or shift a mountainside. It is these catastrophic events that change the landscape.

My brother-in-law gave me a little emergency kit ages ago. I’ve carried it with me on day hikes and backpacking trips ever since. I’ve never used it until today. It fits in an Altoids tin. One might ask how much you can get in such a small package. My question is how Greg managed to fit everything into the tin. (It includes bandages, antibiotic ointment, matches, a razor blade, a compass, a length of cord, one of those Mylar thermal blankets, and a bunch more.)

I met a couple of hikers at the landslide area. One had slipped and bloodied a finger. He asked if I had a Band-Aid. As a matter of fact, I do! I dug to the bottom of my pack, retrieved the Altoids tin, and opened it. Naturally, the Band-Aids were at the bottom, so I had to take everything out to get to them. And, naturally, I was unable to repack the tin. It was like the tin was Dr. Who’s TARDIS – bigger inside than outside – until I tried to refill it. Evidently, Greg found the only way to pack this real-life 3-D Tetris game.

It took me a bit less than three hours to reach the lake. The weather was cool – I wore my jacket nearly all day – and the forecast was for rain starting mid-afternoon. In the end, it never did rain, and it warmed up enough in the afternoon for me to finally pack my jacket.

The two hikers I met in the landslide never did make it to the lake. I met another pair of hikers before I reached the lake. They asked if I’d seen any moose. They said they encountered a cow and calf on their hike in. I had seen the tracks, but not the animals that made them. I saw no big game all day.

One other hiker did arrive at the lake while I was there, and the only other hikers I ran into were on their way to check out the landslide area. I didn’t realize it was well enough known to be an attraction on its own.

  • Kawuneeche Valley mists
  • Mt Nimbus
  • “Active Landslide Area”
  • The center of the landslide area
  • Today’s Beer
  • North Timber Pond
  • South Timber Pond
  • What is it with rodents and my beer?
  • Timber Lake

A few yards Southwest of Timber Lake are two unnamed ponds, which I’m calling North Timber Pond and South Timber Pond. They’re scenic in their own right, and if you’ve made the effort to visit Timber Lake, they’re worth the extra few minutes. I suspect they don’t see very many visitors, as I didn’t spot any social trails leading to them.

On the hike out, I made a stop at one of the campsites on the trail. There are four. From closest to the trailhead to closest to the lake, they are Timber Creek, Jackstraw, Rockslide, and Snowbird. I checked out Rockslide. It’s a very nice camp. It’s only about a ten-minute hike to the lake, and ten or twelve minutes the other way there’s a privy (close to Jackstraw campsite). If I were ever to want to camp in the area, I’d stay here.

Timber Lake is worth a visit. It’s not a difficult hike, it affords some solitude, and the landslide area may be of interest.

LocationTime
Trailhead8:54 am
Timber Creek campsite10:36 am
Jackstraw campsite11:15 am
Rockslide campsite11:30 am
Snowbird campsite11:35 am
Timber Lake11:41 am

Back On The Streets

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The Elise has been out of commission since October, but as of a few weeks ago, thanks to Michael, with an assist from Dan, we are up and running.

It’s throwing occasional misfire codes. We have a new set of plugs but haven’t put them in yet. Perhaps it’s as simple as that. We’ll probably change the coil packs, too. In any event, it throws a misfire code periodically. I’ve driven it around town and on round trips to Grand Lake, Estes Park, and Livermore. I’ve gone through a couple of tanks of fuel.

I’m due for new license plates, and I had to get an emissions test. I went early, and there wasn’t a line. The last several times I’ve done this, they don’t have me get out of the car. They have me plug the OBD cable in, and I drive the car through the garage. This time, though, the guy told me to go to the waiting booth. I started to tell him how to start the car, but halfway through, I said, “Normally, you guys let me plug it in.” He said, “Oh, okay,” and that was that.

Until I went to pay. I didn’t have to pay because I got an “Incomplete”. I didn’t fail, I didn’t pass. “The vehicle’s OBD system has one or more supported readiness monitors in a ‘Not Ready’ status.” I didn’t realize that after you clear your misfire code, you have to run the car for ten minutes at a constant speed to reset the OBD status for that code. Once I figured that out, I drove the car up and down I-70 for a few minutes and went back and retook the test. I passed.

That was on the 17th. On the 25th, I took a drive with the club. We had lunch at the Three Rivers Smokehouse in Almont. That wasn’t the original plan, but an improvisation that improved on the plan. The original plan was to cross Cottonwood Pass westbound and Monarch Pass eastbound. Instead, we went both ways over Cottonwood. Monarch Pass is three lanes wide, which means it’s not as twisty. Not as fun. This was fun. One of the guys, Chris, made a nice video of it here.

On the way back, I stopped at the summit again. It was a beautiful day, so I took the top off. That was the last time I was out of the car until I stopped in Fairplay. Cottonwood Pass is old-school – still two lanes, with several hairpin turns. The speed limit is sometimes 35, sometimes 30. It’s a twisty road.

I made a potty stop in Fairplay. When I got out of the car, I immediately saw a metal bracket sitting on the rear clam. I didn’t know where it came from or how it was still on the car. It wasn’t there at the summit of Cottonwood. When could it have come off? Certainly not on Cottonwood. Not on Trout Creek Pass. And South Park is a series of fast straights. Frankly, I was surprised it didn’t fly off when I pulled into the gas station.

I eventually found where the bracket belongs. I found it on the driver’s side, but it came from the passenger side. It seems to serve no purpose. I suspect it’s leftover from the quick clam removal kit conversion.

As for the misfire, I get codes, but I never notice any misfires. But on the run up Crow Hill, a steep uphill pull at full throttle, I felt it misfire.

I’ll change the oil and swap the plugs before I head to Utah in late September.

It is great to be back on the road again!

  • Cottonwood Pass summit
  • Cottonwood Pass summit
  • The mystery bracket
  • About where I found the mystery bracket

Blue Lake-ish

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Often, when I mention to people that I’ve visited more than 150 named lakes in Colorado, I’ll get asked which is my favorite. It’s both an easy and a difficult question. I don’t have a “Top Ten” list. Today I could give you a list of ten fantastic lakes to visit, but if you ask me tomorrow, you’ll probably get a slightly different list, depending on my mood.

That said, there’s one place that I keep returning to: Glacier Gorge. It’s the valley that runs north/south immediately west of Longs Peak, anchored by Mills Lake at its northern end. Within Glacier Gorge, there are eight named lakes: Mills, Jewel, Black, Blue, Green, Frozen, Shelf, and Solitude. I’ve been to all of them multiple times. I could probably name a few lakes that are more dramatic or scenic or awesome than any of these eight.

But the southern end of Glacier Gorge keeps drawing me back for more visits. Black Lake is the launching pad. Climb the trail for four hundred feet beside the inlet stream on the east shore of the lake to be surrounded by greatness. Storm Peak, Longs Peak, Pagoda Mountain, Chiefs Head Peak, Spearhead, McHenrys Peak, Arrowhead, and Thatchtop rise around you, chiseled near-vertical slabs of granite.

It is not the most visited place in the Park, but Mills Lake and Black Lake are relatively easy to get to, so they see a lot of traffic. Taking the Fire Trail shortcut, Black Lake is four miles from the trailhead. The Fire Trail isn’t on maps distributed by the Park, and both ends of it are obscured so as to limit traffic, but it does get a fair amount of use by experienced and knowledgeable hikers.

I haven’t visited Glacier Gorge yet this year, so it was time for a trip.

The trailhead is on Bear Lake Road, so a timed entry pass is required. They go up for sale at 7:00 pm the night before. They release more than a hundred passes each day. And, no matter how early I arrive, I park at the Park-N-Ride and take the shuttle bus to the trailhead.

August 18, 2026

I decided to go back to Blue Lake. Having been there before, I didn’t bother taking a map with me. I know where it is, and although there’s no trail (that I know of), it’s not a difficult navigational problem. (He said with confidence!)

I put boots on the trail a couple of minutes after eight and arrived at Black Lake a few minutes after ten. The climb up the inlet, although fairly steep, doesn’t take long. It flattens out as you get to the top, and I got off the trail pretty quickly. Up here, it’s islands of granite slabs separated by seas of willow and krummholz. Regular readers know my dislike of willow and krummholz.

It’s just a matter of finding a route that maximizes travel over granite and avoiding the willow. This is often easier said than done. Forty minutes after leaving Black Lake, I found myself standing over a small pond that’s not on the map. I reckoned that Blue Lake was that way a short distance and surveyed my surroundings for an easy route.

Then I decided I’d just stop here and enjoy my surroundings. It’s easy to get caught up in goals: my goal was Blue Lake. But I’ve been there before. I’d never been to this little puddle; it has fundamentally the same view as Blue Lake, and the chances that anybody else will come here today are close to zero. Why not have my picnic here? So I did.

It turns out I was just 650′ more or less due west of Blue Lake. This little puddle is snow-fed and has no inlet or outlet. The water today was about a foot and a half below the high-water mark. I found some fairly fresh elk tracks, but didn’t spot any big game.

From here, if one had a decent pair of binoculars or a camera with a telephoto lens, it’s possible to spot hikers on Longs Peak making their way up the Trough, or hardcore climbers working up one of the sheer faces of Spearhead. Lacking any serious optical aids, I shot a couple of photos of these areas on the phone using maximum magnification, but no humans appear in these photos.

  • Mills Lake
  • McHenrys and Arrowhead
  • Ypsilon and Fairchild
  • Today’s beer
  • Mills Lake and beyond

I sat there for about an hour watching the world go by. The weather to the north looked to be turning nasty – rain showers were moving over the Mummy range. Even at 11,000′, my view to the west is blocked by the high peaks, and you don’t get much advance notice of storms rolling in. I figured chances were good I’d get rained on soon, so I packed up and headed down. In the end, the weather remained nice. I returned to the trailhead by a quarter to three.

Just another beautiful day in the Park.

Stone Lake and Upper Lake

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In north-central Indian Peaks Wilderness, in a high mountain valley bounded by Hiamovi Mountain, Cooper Peak, and the improbably named Ooh La La!, lie two lakes: Stone Lake and Upper Lake. I’m mildly amused by the name of the latter. My brain glitches a bit; it wants to add a word. Upper what lake? I’ve recently been to Upper Storm Lake, and I’ve visited Upper Crater Lake. Upper Storm Lake is above Storm Lake, and Upper Crater Lake is above two other Crater Lakes. Shouldn’t this one follow the pattern and be “Upper Stone Lake”?

I put this hike on my “possibles” list some time ago, but waffled back and forth between thinking it was a day hike and a backpacking trip. It’s only about 6.2 miles to Upper Lake, and I often make longer day hikes. But this one had me doubting myself. Typically, my destination lake is the high point of the hike. For this one, the trail passes over a saddle from one drainage to another. The trail climbs to 11,200′, then descends 700′ before a gentle climb to the lakes. By the time the hiker reaches the high point of the hike on the way back to the trailhead, this works out to nearly 4,000′ of total elevation gain in about 8 miles. So it’s a steep one.

Friday, August 7

The Watanga Lake trailhead (I’ve also seen it listed as the Roaring Fork trailhead) is at Arapaho Bay in Lake Granby. It’s about ten miles from US 34, and nine miles of that is dirt road. But the road is very well maintained, has no ruts, and isn’t a washboard road. I’ve driven the Lotus on it a couple of times before. The parking lot has room for maybe two dozen vehicles. On this August weekday morning, there were only four cars there when I arrived at 7:30 am.

Within a few minutes of hitting the trail, we are on the first steep section of the hike, climbing five hundred feet in a bit more than a third of a mile. In contrast, the next thousand feet of elevation gain takes nearly two miles, to the junction with the Roaring Fork trail. (I may be using the incorrect names; I’m assuming we’re on the Watanga Lake trail until that junction. And note that there seem to be many trails called the “Roaring Fork Trail”.) To this point, the trail was alongside Arapaho Creek.

At the trail junction, we make a right turn. After a few minutes, we reach the second steep lift of the hike, gaining another five hundred feet in four-tenths of a mile. The map shows a stream not far from the trail and crossing it at least once. This summer has been quite dry. From the junction until nearly as far as Stone Lake, there isn’t any water. I had plenty of water to get me to the lakes, but I always like to keep track of my water sources.

At the top of the climb, still more than a mile and a half from Stone Lake, the trail passes through a large meadow with expansive views to the south and east, and the dramatic peaks in the heart of Indian Peaks Wilderness are on glorious display. Well, that was mostly true today. The sky was cloudless, but not the deep blue I’m accustomed to when hiking above 11,000′. Today, everything is hazy due to distant wildfires.

After taking in the views from the meadow, the trail descends into Hell Canyon. Here, we come to the third steep section. On the way to Stone Lake, we’re going down this steep bit. We’ll have to go back up it on the return to the trailhead. The footing here is sometimes less than ideal. Trek poles definitely help. Again, we see a five hundred foot elevation change in about four-tenths of a mile.

From the trailhead to the meadow at the top of the hike, the trail moves through moderately dense forest. In Hell Canyon, the forest thins out considerably. In late morning, the sun felt pretty good, but on the return trip, in the heat of early afternoon, the sun was oppressive. I didn’t see any clouds until nearly 3 pm.

There isn’t much traffic on this trail. I met an older couple at the trail junction, and a group of eight backpackers passed me in the meadow. I met two more backpackers about a mile short of Stone Lake. I didn’t see anybody else until I returned to the trailhead. Because there’s not much traffic, the trail becomes less obvious. It’s never difficult to follow, but in the places where it goes through grassy fields, I imagine it would only take a few weeks without hikers for the trail to disappear.

Both Stone Lake and Upper Lake are gorgeous. They are not situated above treeline in a stark cirque, nor in forest with trees lining the shore. There is forest, but it’s sparse and set back from the grassy shore. Hiamovi Tower stands majestically above Upper Lake. There are many small ponds scattered about.

The trail from Stone Lake to Upper Lake isn’t obvious, but that doesn’t matter. I followed the wrong trail and ended up at a campsite. I just headed cross-country toward Upper Lake and was there in a few minutes. The campsite I stumbled upon was the only one I saw, but no doubt there are a few others that are just as nice.

I’ll come back here for a backpacking trip someday. There are two named lakes a short distance down Stone Lake’s outlet. These shouldn’t be too difficult to reach. I’d also like to head north from Upper Lake (toward the saddle just above the beer can in my “Today’s beer” photo) to visit an unnamed lake in the extreme southern part of Rocky Mountain National Park. I’d guess that lake gets very few visitors.

  • Grouse
  • Marten Peak
  • First sight of Stone Lake
  • Stone Lake
  • Upper Lake
  • Today’s beer
  • Upper Lake and Hiamovi Tower
  • The heart of Indian Peaks Wilderness
SegmentDistanceElev ChangeTimeSpeed
Trailhead to Watanga Jct2.5 mi608’/mi1:411.5 mph
Watanga Jct to Stone Lake3.2 mi254’/mi12:391.2 mph
Stone Lake to Upper Lake0.4 mi245’/mi0:201.2 mph
Trailhead to Upper Lake6.1 mi399’/mi14:401.3 mph
  1. Net elevation change, not gross ↩︎

New Host

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My blog has been hosted by GoDaddy for the entire run. They’ve gotten a bit expensive for a personal blog, so I’m moving.

I don’t know when the move will be complete, but hopefully it’ll be done soon and will be smooth.

All that’s moving is the blog, any other content on my site will be gone. The new url for the blog, I think, will be http://grunschev.com.

See you on the other side.