Raining Hike in Estes Park
It's been a long time since we had gotten outside and hiked anything, so this weekend we attempted a 7.5 mile hike to get to Pierson mountain. There were some storms in the skies but nothing on the radar looked too threatening. We started hiking and immediately got poured on in the first third mile of the hike. So we went back to the car and waited for the storm to pass. At that point, we weren't really up to finish that hike so we decided to forget about that idea and do something else a little easier instead. We headed over to the area that we hiked the last time we were in the mountains to go on a slightly different trail. When we did Panorama Peak in May, we intended to go over to the Notch, but didn't end up missing the turn to get there. So today we decided that going to the Notch would be a really nice easy hike after our rainy failure at Pierson Mountain.
It ended up raining on us again as we were hiking to the Notch, but it was a pretty light rain and we were able to stand under a tree and get good shelter for the 5 minutes that we had to wait for the storm to pass. The hike itself was under 4 miles and took us an hour and a half, including a pretty lengthy rest at the notch while we waited for some clouds to pass over the sun to get better photos.
3.72 mi
1.6 hrs
8,675 ft
643 ft
Green Grass
Even in the summer I'm not used to seeing this much green. Even from Spring rain, we never get enough to make everything perfectly green. But because of our good rain in the Spring and the rain over the past several days, everything was alive and well.
Withering Columbine
It's always a delight to find wild columbines on hikes. There not a rare flower by any means, but they are fun to photograph.
Sulphurflower Buckwheat
I love the yellow and orange colors in this wild Buckwheat flower.
