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.

  • Shelf Lake and Decatur Mountain
  • Shelf Lake and Square Top Mountain
  • Today’s beer
  • The Imperative of Life
  • Shelf Lake
  • Shelf Lake
  • I’d like to cross this ridge…
  • Summer’s End
  • Colorado Gold

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.

Upper Storm Lake

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Jasper Creek drains the valley east of the Continental Divide, bounded by Mount Jasper on the north and Skyscraper Peak on the south. In this valley are found Jasper Lake, Devil’s Thumb Lake, Storm Lake, and Upper Storm Lake, as well as half a dozen or so unnamed lakes and ponds. Upper Storm Lake sits at 11,946′ above sea level, about a furlong from the Divide, and is the only named lake here that I haven’t visited yet. No, I won’t make you look that up: it’s an eighth of a mile.

Chad and I hiked to Storm Lake a couple of years ago, when I managed to lose one of my GoPro cameras. Before that trip, I thought it might be possible to reach the upper lake on a day hike, but once I got a good look at the terrain, I decided I’d need to spend a night camping at Jasper Lake in order to have a chance.

Sunday, July 26

As is usual, I struggled with how early we needed to get to the trailhead. There is limited parking at the trailhead. On weekends, this isn’t a big problem as they run a shuttle bus from Nederland High School to the Hessie trailhead. Since we won’t be back at the trailhead until Monday, the shuttle isn’t an option for us.

So it was a bad sign when we rolled up to the high school at seven to see the parking lot nearly full and a sign saying parking at both Hessie and Fourth of July trailheads is full. I told the volunteer we have a backcountry pass, and he got on the radio to a colleague. We were in luck: they had saved one parking spot at Hessie. Does that mean our timing was perfect?

It’s about five miles from the trailhead to Jasper Lake, but we were parked another quarter mile down the road. We arrived at our campsite just after eleven, so I was pretty slow. Carrying the backpack really slows me down. There are seven campsites at the lake. We camped on the west side, so I don’t know if any of the sites on the other side were occupied. One on the west had a tent on it when we got there, but it was gone by evening.

After setting up camp and eating lunch, we set forth for Upper Storm Lake. The climb up Jasper Creek is spectacular. You pass a series of cascades and falls surrounded by an abundance of wildflowers. We’re not above treeline yet, but the views are open. The trail peters out now and then, but navigation is fairly obvious until you get very close to Storm Lake and encounter some willow and krumholz.

Standing near the outlet of Storm Lake, the view of the terrain ahead is a bit discouraging. The north shore looks to be impassable due to a surplus of willow, and the south shore has a large rock outcropping we would have to go above. It looked like we’d have to climb a couple hundred feet to find a clear path.

Once above the south shore, things didn’t look much better. We’re standing in front of a large bowl. The two obvious routes are to head northwest and descend to the bottom of the bowl, and from there climb to Upper Storm Lake’s eastern shore. Alternatively, we could circle the bowl, heading west and curving north, climbing slightly the whole way. Neither looked particularly appealing. The lower route would mean dealing with vast fields of willow, while the upper meant crossing quite a bit of talus. We were hoping to find some grassy ramps to cross, but these were in short supply. We opted for the upper route.

Gordon led the way. He’s a faster hiker than me, and he has a knack for finding the easy path. Initially, he found some game trails to follow, but these disappeared fairly quickly. Our route, in the end, was about a mile long, with most of that being talus. It took us about two hours to reach Upper Storm Lake.

It started raining fifteen or twenty minutes before we reached the upper lake. Gordon put his raincoat on first. I was hoping he had the magic raincoat – the one that, as soon as you put it on, makes the rain stop. His coat was not magic. My coat did the trick last week, but I must have used all the magic, as today the rain continued. Oh well.

Any lake at or above 12,000′ is going to be stark. Upper Storm Lake is no exception. Dark, rain-laden clouds are coming over the Divide from the west, but the rain that falls is blowing in from the east. At the Divide, I’m accustomed to seeing layers of clouds that move in different directions. Now, the clouds all move in one direction, but the raindrops are going the wrong way. How does this work? The clouds aren’t very far above us; it didn’t seem possible for this to be happening. Just another of the wonders of weather along the Continental Divide.

We didn’t linger very long. The clouds grew more threatening every minute. Two things in particular were on my mind. First, the possibility of lightning. Above treeline, there’s nowhere to hide. Second, the rocks tend to get slippery when wet, and we had to cross the better part of a mile of talus. I mentioned the second to Gordon, but neither of us wanted to mention lightning for fear of tempting the godz. I never did see any lightning, but we did hear one peal of thunder.

The route down is typically easier to find than the route up. I often find an easier route. After surveying the options, we chose to return the way we came. Better the devil you know – the big patches of willow didn’t look any better from here. Gordon did a great job of route finding, minimizing the talus and maximizing the few grassy ramps. His balance amazes me; never a false step, never had to use his hands. I, on the other hand, managed to slip on wet rocks twice, landing unceremoniously on my ass. No harm, no foul.

  • Falls and Flowers
  • Jasper Lake
  • What’s with the orange needles?
  • Mossy
  • Storm Lake
  • Upper Storm Lake
  • Threatening clouds at Upper Storm Lake
  • Parry’s Primrose
  • Descending to Storm Lake

I made it back to camp a bit after five. I didn’t see anybody else at the lake, which surprised me. I was expecting all the campsites to be taken, but it very much looked like we were the only campers here.

The skies never did clear up. We had light rain off and on all night.

Monday, July 27

In the morning, I spent some time investigating the shoreline of Lake Jasper. It’s a reservoir, and with the drought conditions we’re having, the lake is at perhaps its lowest level, maybe twelve feet below its full capacity. It’s hard for me to judge when the water level went down. Some of this liminal space between the current shoreline and the usual one is dried and cracked, while in other areas it’s still muddy. Some plants are just starting to grow here, perhaps not more than a week old. Moose tracks are all over the place.

Years ago, I seldom saw moose. When I did see them, it was only on the western slope. Now, east or west of the Divide, I see moose on almost every hike. While exploring, I heard a distant splash. It took me a few minutes to spot him. He was swimming across the lake about a hundred yards away. When he got to the opposite shore, he shook himself like a dog, then began to frolic: jumping back and forth, splashing in the water. He was too far away to get a decent picture. We ran into him later, on the trail when we were hiking out.

It took me a bit longer to hike out than it did to get in. You’d think I’d have an easier time going downhill, but that’s seldom the case for me. Today I struggled. I think my age is catching up to me. I do just fine on day hikes, but the 35lb backpack kicks my ass. I have a permit for next month, but I’m wondering whether I’ll cancel it or not.

  • Moose frolic
  • Who are you looking at?

Despite my growing reluctance to carry a heavy backpack, the poor weather, and the difficult hike from Storm Lake to Upper Storm Lake, I had a good time. My irrational desire to always “bag” new lakes compels me to visit places that may not be worth the trip. I can’t recommend that hikers go to Upper Storm Lake, as “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze”, but I gained a warm sense of accomplishment by going there.

Pawnee Lake

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Pawnee Lake sits a stone’s throw west of the Continental Divide, in the heart of Indian Peaks Wilderness, surrounded by Blackfoot, Paiute Peak, Mount Toll, Pawnee Peak, and Shoshoni Peak. It can be reached from trailheads at Brainard Lake, east of the Divide. Taking that seven-mile route involves a 2000′ climb to Pawnee Pass, followed by a sketchy 1700′ descent to the lake, making for a total of 3700′ of climbing for the round trip.

Not being a big fan of sketchy steep descents and going uphill both ways to school, I chose to get there from the Monarch Lake trailhead. It’s eight miles and climbs about 2500′. The only negative to this option for me is the extra hour’s drive each way.

Friday, July 17

The hike to Pawnee Lake shares much of the route to Crater Lake. Instead of hiking the last mile to Crater Lake, make a left turn on the Pawnee Pass trail and hike about 1.7 miles to Pawnee Lake. On my trip to Crater Lake, I wasn’t sure about my park pass. I later learned that if you have an annual pass or lifetime pass, just leave it visible on the dash of your car.

The trail to Crater Lake gets a fair amount of traffic. Crater Lake is gorgeous, and there are a few nice falls and cascades along the trail. If the hike to Crater Lake was shorter, I think there’d be many more visitors. I encountered quite a few backpackers hiking out from a night or two at Crater Lake, but I didn’t meet anybody who had been to Pawnee Lake.

Shortly after passing the Buchanan Pass trail, I met a couple of moose. Some hikers I’d passed a few minutes before warned me they were up ahead. Still, I came up on them abruptly. As I came around a corner, one was on the trail about fifteen feet in front of me. I was expecting to see him, but he wasn’t expecting to see me. He took a couple of steps toward me before he left the trail. I took a few more steps before I saw the second guy. He, too, was startled, and his first steps were in my direction. Moose have a reputation for being unpredictable, but in my dozens of encounters with them, this is the first time I thought I might have to put a tree between us.

After hiking 6.3 miles of trail that’s shared with Crater Lake, there’s a final trail junction. Go to the left and hike a further 1.7 miles to Pawnee Lake, climbing about 800′. The trail affords some nice views of steep and jagged terrain of Cherokee, Lone Eagle Peak, and Mount George.

Not long after diverging from the Crater Lake trail, I met two women backpacking out. They had come over the Divide from Long Lake. I asked them about the descent from Pawnee Pass. They both shook their heads. They didn’t like it. I’m sure it’s easier with a day pack than a full backpack, but their few words supported my decision to avoid crossing the pass.

I sat by the lake for nearly an hour, and for half of that, it rained lightly, just enough to warrant the rain jacket. Before I left the lake, the clouds were breaking up, and I could see my shadow more often than not. By mid-afternoon, a quick, cool shower would have been welcomed.

On my hike out, at one of the falls that has a nice pool, I ran into four backpackers from Minnesota. They had just cooled off with a dip in the pool and suggested I do the same. They were doing a big loop: Brainard Lake north to Buchanan Pass trail, then on to Pawnee Lake and Pawnee Pass and back to Brainard Lake. The research they’d done recommended this counter-clockwise route rather than clockwise, as it’s better to go up the west side of Pawnee Pass than to go down it. More confirmation that I made the correct choice.

One other hiker I encountered deserves mention. We had a rather long conversation. He had a bit of an accent, but just a bit. Parting, I asked if he was Australian. He laughed and said I was one of the few who noticed. I said I wasn’t sure, as I can’t really discern the difference between Aussie and Kiwi accents. He told me he’s been in the US for more than a decade and spent some time in Britain. Then he gave me a perfect demonstration of the differences between Aussie, Kiwi, and South African accents.

I have no time-lapse video today. Even if I hadn’t forgotten the camera at home, the weather would have made for a boring video.

  • Moose action shot
  • Apache Peak and Lone Eagle Peak
  • Pawnee Lake
  • Today’s beer
  • Pawnee Lake pano
  • Pawnee Lake

Timetable

SegmentDistanceElev ChangeTimeSpeed
Trailhead to Crater Lake Trail1.6 mi16’/mi0:303.2 mph
Crater Lake Trail to Buchanan Pass Jct1.7 mi245’/mi0:472.2 mph
Buchanan Pass Jct to Pawnee Pass Jct3.0 mi417’/mi2:181.3 mph
Pawnee Pass Jct to Pawnee Lake1.7 mi482’/mi1:101.5 mph
Trailhead to Pawnee Lake8.0 mi315’/mi4:451.7 mph