Hikes in RMNP

 

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog posts….  Picking up at about Aug 9th on this Epic Adventure!!!

 

While in RMNP ( the first time in early August) we visited the west side one day.  Talked to the backcountry ranger about setting up a backcountry trip in the future (Now we’ve done that!)… that sounds fun!  Visited the old Holzworth dude ranch and took the 10 minute (which lasted 45 minutes) ranger tour of the old cabins.

 

We hiked Nymph lake, Dream lake and Emerald lake one day.  This was a nice little, 3 mile hike with some elevation.  Emerald lake was the furthest in and if you wanted to scramble across the rocks a bit you could go to the far side (like I did!).   It wasn’t too hard.  I scurried along that left shore and around the corner to the end of the lake where the waterfall fed into the lake.

 

 

Impressively there was a young couple who not only scrambled to the far side of the lake where there was a waterfall, but they continued to scramble up a very steep and massive talus slope to get up to a snow patch!  I didn’t do that.

 

 

They made it to that small patch of snow, center left, that kind of looks like a delta   You could not see them from this distance, they were way too tiny.

 

The next day we hiked Cub lake loop then still feeling energetic we also hiked to Alberta falls.

 

Here’s Cub lake.  It was covered with lily pads..

We were going to hike an out-and-back at cub lake, but the trail kept going so when I saw a dude with a map and a safari hat I asked if he knew where the trail led.  He said it was a loop.  If we just kept on going, took the right fork, we’d end up back at fern lake trailhead and about a mile from our vehicle.  Well the Safari hat made him look like a righteous fellow so we trusted his directions and kept on hiking.

 

 

Along the way we ran into a hiker who had been hiking all day.  He was on his last 2-3 miles of a 12 mile hike.  We talked for a bit then he went on ahead.  About an hour later we caught up with him, but this time he was banging his walking sticks together, saying, “here bear, here bear” and just generally disturbing the peace.  When we caught up I said, “Dude!  You’re never going to see a bear if you keep making all that racket.”  He said, “Dude!  I just saw a bear cub on the trail and I don’t want to see it’s mother.”  Well we never saw the bear but we did run across some more folks further down the trail who asked if we’d seen the bear… so everyone saw it but us… typical.

 

 

 

 

Alberta Falls was a short hike which brought us to a total of almost 10 miles of hiking for the day.

 

Nice little waterfall, but I’m done for the day…

 

Those are the highlights of Estes Park/ RMNP for the week of Aug 9th.  We’re still working our way to Yellowstone to meet some friends ( I hope they don’t mind spending their whole vacation with us… we’ve got nothing else to do but loaf around and get free meals from others).  You’ve seen a sneak peak of Yellowstone already, but there is more amazing storytelling to come!