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Odessa Lake and Lake Helene

For whatever reason, we thought it would be a great idea to go up into Rocky Mountain National Park on the weekend before the 4th of July. If that's not bad enough, we decided to start our hike in the most popular area, Bear Lake. But we did it, and it was packed in the morning. It took about 20 minutes for us to get through the entrance and buy our annual pass. We got into the park around 8 am, parked, took the shuttle to Bear Lake Trailhead, and started our hike a little after 9 am. Once we took our first turn off the path from Bear Lake, the number of people significantly decreased, and it was back to just us and nature.

Our original goal was to make it to Lake Helene with the intent on hiking down the gorge to Odessa Lake. We brought enough food that we could eat lunch at one of the lakes, and since we got to Lake Helene around 11, we thought we would hike the extra 1.2 miles down to Odessa Lake for our lunch break. We ended up getting a little lost trying to get back on the trail to head to Odessa Lake, but we ended up finding an amazing overlook of the gorge including both lakes and Notchtop Mountain, so getting lost worked out in our favor.

The hike took us a total of 4 hours, 47 minutes and we hiked a total distance of 9.48 miles with a strenuous 2524 feet of elevation gain.

Trailhead Location
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9.48 mi 4.8 hrs 10,477 ft 2,524 ft
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My Hiker Buddy
Bierstadt Lake
Little Creek
Circular Bokah
Snowy Day in July
Bent
Deer
Notchtop Mountain
Snack Time Panorama
Lake Helene
Flattop Mountain
Clear Water
Odessa Lake
Through the Gorge
Odessa and Katherine
Down We Go
Fern Creek
On the Bridge
Odessa Lake Panorama
Lunch Time Smiles
At the Shore
Small Waterfall
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