Nymph, Dream, and Emerald Lake

We headed up into the mountains for the first time this year to go snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. We bought a parks pass since this is pretty much the only area that didn't get burned to the ground this summer (although it got its fair share of burning as well). We figured that this year will be a lot of Rocky Mountain National Park hiking so we might as well buy a pass to get into the park all year long.

We got to the trailhead at about 9:30, right as the storm over the trail was dissipating. It was perfect because we had pretty good fresh snow but it wasn't snowing directly on top of us. The trail was also a little less busy when we started our hike since people were waiting for the storms to pass.

We were well prepared with our clothing and equipment, however, I did forget one critical item: an SD card fro my camera. I even had 4 camera batteries with me, but no SD card. So all of these photos were taken with my phone which did a decent job, however, it didn't do so great with the colors (which is why there's a lot of black and white photos in this album). Oh well, you live and you learn and this isn't a mistake I'll be making again during the 2021 hiking season.

We didn't need our snowshoes to get to Nymph Lake, they were arguably needed to get from Nymph Lake to Dream Lake, and they were essential to get from Dream to Emerald Lake. The hike took us almost 2 and a half hours for the 3.5 mile round trip hike that was only 827 feet of elevation gain.