We are so grateful for the beautiful weather we had this past week. It made our backpacking trip much more pleasant.
I spent the entire week before prepping our food and boy were we glad. You can see our meals here
Why such extensive meal prep? Because we were going backpacking into Rocky Mountain National Park. Normally I will dehydrate a few things and we will just carry a little bit of extra weight in order to eat well. (We aren’t fans of the “backpacking meals” they sell. They aren’t very good and they are super pricey.) But, in order to backpack in RMNP you have to carry a bear cache and ALL your food and ALL your toiletries and ALL your trash has to fit in it at ALL times. I guess the bears there are too smart for hanging stuff high up in trees. We didn’t know how big this cache would be, or how heavy. So we took it safe. And I am glad, because I ended up carrying the bear cache and food. (Derek had the tent and water which was heavier).
FRIDAY: We packed into our campsite Friday night and it was luckily only 1.7 miles in, because we didn’t get on the trail until after 6 pm.
We camped just up from ‘The Pool’ on the Fern Lake Trailhead.
And of course, it was the perfect camp site.
Derek brought our light weight hammock. It was nice.
We played games like who can stack the rocks highest. Derek won on the timed trial because I decided to rebuild last minute. But I won in strategy.
It was so warm at night. I didn’t even do up my sleeping bag all the way. And our boots weren’t cold in the morning. I was amazed.
SATURDAY
We had the most delicious breakfast. Here is a link.
We left our camp and just took day packs. Glad thing, because it was an 18 mile day. Possibly a little more. In snow. We hiked back to the the trailhead and drove somewhere else to hike. (The amount of snow still in the park hindered where we could go and we wanted to save the shorter and easier loop by our camp for Sunday.) So we went to the ‘Bear Lake Trailhead’ and we hiked up to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, and Emerald Lake.
Dream Lake
Emerald Lake. (You can't see it, but there are skiers hiking up there)
Then back down to Dream Lake and around it and up to Lake Hiyahah (I don’t know how to spell that one).
On the way to Lake Hiyahah
Lake Hiyahah
Couldn't not do a karate kick at Lake Hiyahah
Then to the Loch. However, there wasn’t a trail after Lake Hiyahah so instead of the 1.7 miles to the fork it was more like 3 of trailblazing through snow and trees and steep slopes and boulders that we weren’t supposed to be on. Every once in a while we would stumble upon the trail, but then we’d lose it again. But luckily for us, we brought our snowshoes, gators, and walking sticks. So we were okay. It was an adventure. And Derek was a trooper, he broke through the ice in Nymph Lake (very beginning of the hike) before he had is gators on, so he did the ENTIRE day with wet feet.
Drying out the shoes/socks during lunch
Lunch break
We eventually got to the Loch and it was worth it. The most beautiful sight we came upon.
The Loch
Then we hiked up and around to Timberline Falls. And that is as far as we could get. Something about doing a verticle, snowy climb, with no ropes or cramp ons, etc. didn’t jive with us. Plus, we still needed to get all the way out (like 6 miles), drive back to camp and hike back to camp.
Alberta Falls on the way back to the trailhead
Victory
We were so beat. We slept so well in our toasty tent. (It baked in the sun all day and was like a little oven.)
SUNDAY
We slept in as much as the sun would allow and went on an easy hike up to Fern Lake. We attempted to get up to some other lakes, but the way became too treacherous (super steep embankments of snow ending in falling off a cliff). We made it across many, and were probably almost there. But we decided that seeing a lake wasn’t worth it. So we returned, set up our hammock and hung out at Fern Lake. It was nice. We had a nice little devotional (it was the Sabbath after all) and it was great.
View from the hammock at Fern Lake
Attempting to get to the other lakes
Fishing
We later packed out and checked into a little motel in Estes Park. We walked around the art show and had an unconventional picnic (meaning we cooked our last backpacking meal (Sappy Pasta akdhf;kasjf;kdj(link) in our Jetboil) on a patch of grass next to the US Bank. Then we went and watched documentaries all night (we were bushed).
MONDAY: We went on the hardest trail run of my life. No joke. As I plotted the course using mapmyrun, I paid no attention to the elevation in general, elevation gain, terrain, etc. I just said 10.5 mile loop with an option of an out-and-back making it 12.5, awesome. So we started and from the beginning it was death. So many steep stairs. Then it evened out and even went downhill. Then it was a nice mix of up and down. Then it started to go up and I thought, maybe we should make it 10.5 instead of 12.5, but little did I know we were already 3/4 up the out-and-back trail. (I tend to get big time tunnel vision when I run).
Needless to say, there was a fair share of walking/hiking on this run (which is saying something for us). And the worst wasn’t the out-and-back. It was after coming down from that. I later looked at it and we were doing 8-9% grades for all those uphills (at least that was the average) and according to the signage, we did 13.2, not 12.5. And someone may say, that is only .7 miles. Oh, it makes a HUGE difference. Especially when you have drank all of your water and only had a clifbar and a banana for pre-run fuel. There was a point where we thought we were almost done, only to have our hopes crashed. It was flat, and I didn’t have the strength to tell Derek, “I need to stop”, the words just wouldn’t come.
It was rough. We both agreed that we would rather run a marathon, than EVER do that again. Especially because it took us somewhere between 2:45 and 2:50 to do it. 13.2 miles. Derek can almost do an entire marathon in that time. It was so hard. Started elevation = 7300 feet. 2000 feet of net gain. So who knows how much we actually climbed, because there was a fair amount of steep downhill.
I only fell once. But what fun is a trail run without a little blood.
We rewarded ourselves with an all you can eat Nepalese restaurant in town. So good. And only $9.95/person. For all you can eat. And you better believe we went to town.
We were “supposed” to climb that afternoon. But after sitting by the river in town and digesting, we were both too beat to climb. So we shall save Jurassic Park for another day. Even though I bought new quick draws for the trip. We needed them.
