I took some time off from hiking this week to do some other things. I took a couple of biking classes at a local gym with Dan, Bonnie and the kids and ran some errands to catch up on things. They have a puppy, Lydee, who has been keeping Abbey real busy. Abbey hasn't played this much ever, I think. She wears out long before Lydee does. Bonnie and I did take the dogs on a moderate walk one day, but it has been so hot this week that I didn't miss hiking at all. 5 days in a row it was over 100. On Thursday night, Dan & I prepared ourselves for a short backpacking trip through Rocky Mountain National Park. We left at 6AM Friday morning and drove to Bear Lake, one of the most popular trailheads in the park. Since we were hiking through the park, we had to leave the dogs at home. The trail went up pretty steeply the whole way to Flattop Mountain, but it had great views at the top, especially of Longs Peak '? the highest in Colorado. A storm came in real early, even for the Rockies, but we were ahead of it and stayed out of the storms all day. We were above treeline for quite a while, but managed to get down to our campsite by 2:30 in the afternoon. We were both pretty beat so after we set up camp we took a short nap on our 'patio'. We had a great site fairly close to a really nice stream. There's nothing like falling asleep to the sound of a rushing stream in the wilderness. We had a wonderful meal of rehydrated sweet-n-sour pork and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Actually, it was pretty good.
Unfortunately, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep. So I wondered around under a nearly full moon for about an hour. I was just glad I didn't run into any bears or mountain lions. In the morning, we took a hike without our backpacks (much easier) to a nice alpine lake surrounded by steep walls. The hike out was fairly flat with just a gentle downhill slope most of the way. A few miles from the end, we saw these 2 young kids that were pretty weighted down with their packs. One of them had a pot tied onto his pack. We were wondering who they were with when 4 more kids came around the bend looking even worse than the first two. None of them looked happy to be there at all. We waited to see where the adults were, but finally put on our own packs and started down the trail. Just around the first bend we saw the parents/chaperones. They were easy to spot because they were packed the same way. The lady told us they were going to Bear Lake (where we came from the first day!), but they did have 2 days to do it. I don't think those kids could have lasted 2 more days. I sure hope they didn't get caught in a thunderstorm on top of the exposed areas up high. We felt pretty sorry for the kids.
After almost 22 miles of hiking (17+ with a heavy pack), we stumbled into Grand Lake and sacked out in the park until Bonnie showed up with Andrea and the car. Before heading back, we had some good Mexican food and best of all, some nice cold beers. The views along Trail Ridge Road on the ride back were spectacular '? at least the ones I saw when my eyes weren't closed.
At the start (Bear Lake)
Longs Peak
The Trail
Bridge over North Inlet Creek
Snoozing on the "Patio"
Our Camp Couch
Waterfall on North Inlet Creek
Lake Nonokino