Leslie and David's Wanderings: 13 May 2019 Trudging through the Snow

We woke to a beautiful Spring day. Watching the weather reports, we knew there was a good chance of bad weather next week and decided we better see what we could see this week. Based on what the ranger had told us yesterday, we knew all the high altitude hikes David hoped to do were still heavily snowed in.

So we decided to do some of the lower altitude hikes that should be clear of most of the snow. Rocky Mountains had a heavy snow pack this year. We drove to Sprague Lake trailhead and did the short .8 mile hike around the lake to warm up. The views of the lake with the snow-covered mountains in the background were beautiful. There were a fair number of people on this trail, but not overly crowded. The trail is flat and for the most part was dry, but there was a couple of places where we had to walk around snow banks still on the trail. Critter sightings: Canadian Geese on the lake. A beautiful hawk or falcon swooped down to pluck a fish from the lake. It was an thrilling sight!

Warmed up and ready to tackle something more challenging, we headed to the Bierstadt Lake trailhead. We got the last parking spot at the trailhead. Now I should warn you, David found a new application for his phone, AllTrails, which provided reviews of trails along with trail information (distance, altitude climbs, types of activities). But the best feature is the recording function that uses the phones GPS to track your progress on the trail, shows where you are on a topomap, and at the end of the hike summarizes your hike. So you can expect to see detailed hike summaries in our future entries. The first part of Bierstadt Lake trail is a fairly steep, 1 mile climb to the top of a ridge. The trail was dry and had nice views of the surrounding mountains, but it definitely challenged our lung capacity! Once at the top of the ridge, we plunged into a thick forest of pine trees and birch. There was still 2-3 feet of snow on the ground here. The trail from this point looped around the lake before coming back to the top of the ridge.

We had talked with some guys coming down the trail and they said that the snow was packed down and slippery, but they had “Yak Tracks” which helped them quite a bit. They had hiked one of the trails David had hoped to hike while we’re here called Emerald Lake trail. But they had slogged through the snow, repeatedly falling in up to their waists, for 8 miles. David knew there was no way he would get Leslie on that trail in those conditions.

As we took our first tentative steps on the snow, it did not seem too bad. There were places where it was melted off here and there. So we decided to trudge on. Our hiking staffs came in very handy for helping us avoid falling. Leslie pretty much glided across the top of the snow where as David fell through repeatedly. But we made it to Bierstadt Lake and drank in the incredible views before heading back around the rest of the loop. After slipping and sliding through this section of the trail, we decided we need to investigate getting some “Yak Tracks” when we went into town, since we could expect many of the higher altitude trails to be similar to this. We were very happy to have our hiking staffs to steady us. Leslie did slip into deep snow and twist her bad knee enough to make it hurt but otherwise we did well. By now it was late afternoon and the clouds were building up with the threat of rain. We did get sprinkled on as we headed down the switchbacks, but not enough to worry about. We were surprised by the number of people just heading up the trail at 4:30 as we were headed down. And most of them did not have proper hiking shoes on, much less anything to go slogging through the snow with. One thing we noticed on the way down was that there had been a lot of snow melt in the surrounding mountain tops. Hike statistics: 3.4 miles, 597 ft elevation, 1,259 calories burned, total time 3 hours and 25 minutes. Critter sights: Ducks up on the lake was about all.

Later in the evening, a herd of deer came wandering through the RV park and surrounded the Wanderer. You could almost reach out and pet them! Etta was beside herself with these creatures being so close to her territory!