CO hikes
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Colorado Hikes: Helms Lake
I feel very fortunate to be a member of a local women’s hiking group. There are always people looking for hiking buddies, and hosted group hikes occur very frequently. I’ve been lucky enough to secure spots in a few of these hikes, including this one from last fall! Helms Lake is located 6 miles (9.6… Continue reading
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Colorado Hikes: Square Top Lakes
Fall arrived late to Colorado last year, thanks to the fact that winter persisted in the mountains until early July. Typically, fall colors peak in the mountains in mid-September, but this year they didn’t arrive until the end of the month. And then it promptly snowed all over everything, putting an abrupt end to the… Continue reading
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Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes: Thunder Lake
Obtaining a backcountry permit for Rocky requires similar levels of intensity as many Colorado hiking feats, including summiting a 14er or finding parking at a trailhead or snagging a front country campsite anywhere during the summer. Permits become available each year on March 1st at 8:00am MST. So on March 1st at 7:59am, I was… Continue reading
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Colorado Hikes: West Maroon Creek Trail to Crater Lake
There are multiple Crater Lakes in Colorado. There are also multiple Blue Lakes. And Columbine Lakes. And probably lots of other duplicate names as well. Whoever is in charge of the Colorado Lake Naming Commission needs to up their standards for naming creativity. But it’s probably too late for that now, so I’ll just begin… Continue reading
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Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes: Chasm Lake
I’m sure my opinion will change as we explore more of Rocky but, so far, Chasm Lake is my absolute favorite hike in the park! I’ve done this hike twice; first with a friend in late August two summers back, and second with my mom at the end of last June. Chasm Lake shares a… Continue reading
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Colorado Hikes: Ouray Perimeter Trail
Last week, I wrote up a long and detailed post about the San Juan Skyway Scenic Byway, which passes through the scenic mountain town of Ouray (pronounced ‘you-ray’). We were only in town for a few hours so there’s a lot I still don’t know about the town. But I do know that the Ouray… Continue reading
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Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes: Mills, Jewel, and Black Lakes
What strange times these are. I don’t know about you all, but I’m definitely missing the mountains and my usual weekend warrior adventure schedule. I know I’m doing a lot of vicarious living right now through everyone else’s adventure posts, and I hope that I can provide the same for all of you. I have… Continue reading
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Summiting our Second Colorado 13er: Mount Sniktau
I must admit, within about two minutes of beginning our hike up Mount Sniktau I was regretting our decision. I know summiting 13ers and 14ers requires some substantial climbing, but this hike gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘elevation gain.’ The trail basically goes straight up the mountain, gaining 1000 vertical feet (305… Continue reading
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Colorado Backpacking: Browns Creek Falls
Last summer, my mom and I were lucky enough to snag spaces on an overnight backpacking trip in Rocky Mountain National Park with a local hiking group. She’d already purchased her plane ticket to come visit me for the week, so it worked out perfectly when this hike was scheduled for the very weekend she’d… Continue reading
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Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes: winter at Lake Haiyaha
This is one of the few hikes in Rocky that I actually completed in the winter first, and this experience really emphasized the fact that everything looks so different beneath the summer sun than it does covered in snow. I’d never done much winter hiking before moving to Colorado but I learned quickly that winter… Continue reading
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Colorado Hikes: Mayflower Gulch (winter version)
Mayflower Gulch is a beautiful winter destination! The only downfall is that to get there from the Front Range, one must brave the ski traffic on I-70. And boy does that suck. We were on the road before dawn and traffic was already building. It took an extra 30 minutes to get there and an… Continue reading
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Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes: Sky Pond
Ask someone from Colorado what the must-do hike is in Rocky Mountain and many will probably say Sky Pond. The jagged mountain ridge lines above this high mountain lake are pretty iconic. And it’s just a neat hike. Plus, you pass by two waterfalls and two lakes along the way. It’s a lot of bang… Continue reading
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Colorado Destinations: Paint Mines Interpretive Park
Our early October visit to the Paint Mines on the plains of Colorado was a last-minute change of plans after our weekend camping reservations got rained out. Scattered showers and thunderstorms, I can handle. An inch and a half (4 cm) of rain while tent camping, I cannot. It would’ve been a miserable weekend. So… Continue reading
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Summiting our First Colorado 14er – Quandary Peak
Most everyone hoping to summit their first Colorado 14,000 foot (4267 m) peak faces the same dilemma (or, shall I say, quandary): what’s the easiest one to start with? By most accounts, Mount Bierstadt and Quandary Peak are two of the “easier” ones, but I put easier in quotes because it’s all relative. There are… Continue reading
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Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes: Bear Lake to Fern Lake
Welcome to hike #2 in my Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes series! Rocky Mountain operates a free shuttle system from May to October that allows you to leave your car in Estes Park or at the Park-n-Ride inside the park boundary and take the bus to the trailheads, eliminating the stress of arriving at 6:00am… Continue reading
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Summiting our First Colorado 13er – Mount Flora
Because of the risk of altitude sickness at such high elevations, we were very careful with our hiking selections during our first summer in Colorado. We worked our way up to almost 12,000 feet (3650 m) over the first few weekends before deciding we felt acclimated enough to attempt a summit hike without getting sick.… Continue reading
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Rocky Mountain National Park Hikes: Gem Lake
As a perpetual vacation planner, it’s probably not terribly surprising that I started planning Colorado adventures months before our arrival. Nothing too in depth, because reality forced me to balance adventure planning with job applications and house hunting and the like. Nevertheless, I decided early on that we were going to spend as much time… Continue reading
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How To: pitch your tent in the sand
I admit, I’ve had a lot of trouble motivating myself to sit down and write my next post, which is why you haven’t heard from me in a couple weeks. I’ve been stubbornly sticking to my original plan of writing about my adventures in chronological order, and as a person who likes things to be… Continue reading
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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back – Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, Colorado
When I say sand dunes, you probably think of a beach somewhere with mounds of sand in one direction and the vastness of the ocean in the other. But what if I said the sand dunes were in Colorado? Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve is located northeast of Alamosa, CO in the shadow of… Continue reading