Hiking into Rocky Mountain National Park

I guess we didn't endure enough pain from pushing ourselves to the limits on our last hike since this weekend we decided to set a record for the longest distance that we've ever done together. We were in a much better mindset for this hike since we went into it knowing that it would be around 9 miles and 1,800 feet of elevation gain, and I think that made the hike easier in some ways, but we were still completely exhausted and dead by the end of the 4-and-a-half hour hike. Considering this hike was just a little bit longer in distance but just a little bit less elevation gain (1,800ft versus 2,000 feet), I'm pretty proud that we shaved off an hour of hiking from the hike to Diamond Lake.

On the hike up, the highlight was definitely seeing several moose. I saw 3 moose on this hike, first a cow and a baby, and then later a bull moose. Katie saw a fourth moose, a cow, but it ran behind some trees before I could see it. This brings my year-to-date moose sighting to 7 (up 350% from last year!) with plenty of time for us to spot some more before the end of the year. We came around a corner with a bull moose dangerously a few hundred feet up the mountain from us, and Katie didn't even see it. I managed to tell her to stop while I got a few shots of the bull moose's head before it started wandering off. That bull moose definitely didn't like that we were there, but it's lucky for us that he wasn't feeling aggressive and instead wandered into a denser area of trees. I wasn't sure we would see any moose on this hike since the hike started so late in the morning, around 10 am, and moose tend to be out early during the times of cooler weather. But luckily for us, since this hike started at 10,000 feet, it was a cool 60 degrees when we started the hike and it only rose about 10 degrees during the entire hike. That 10 degree differential was enough for no moose to be out on our return back from our summit, but we got to see some which is more than I could have asked for.

Once we got above the treeline - about half way up to the summit - the chance of seeing moose drastically decreased. Shortly after hiking above the tree line, we made it to the first small lake, Michigan Lake (not to be confused with Lake Michigan which is easily 10,000 times larger than the Michigan Lake we came across). At the lake, we forked towards Thunder Pass with the alternative route to continue on to Snow Lake. With the sun pretty high in the sky, the views at Snow Lake would have been washed out, and the reviews of Thunder Pass included panoramic views that we wanted to see. Thunder Pass is the border between State Forest State Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, so once we got to the pass the views opened up and we could see a great deal more looking South into Rocky Mountain National Park. There was a sign marking the boundary, and we crossed over to the Rocky Mountain National Park side to be able to say that we were in Rocky Mountain National Park without paying any fees or having a timed entry permit (although that's not 100% true since it was a $9 fee to get into State Forest State Park). The panoramic views were exceptional and we knew we made the right choice by going to Thunder Pass instead of Snow Lake.

On the way back we humored ourselves that we could do the quick hike to Snow Lake. That idea was quickly squashed when we had to go up a very slight incline that wasn't more than 20 feet of ascent. With our muscles protesting, we knew we should head back. Maybe someday we'll get a double-digit (10+ miles) hike in. We were only 3/4 mile from achieving that today, but we'll save that record for another hike.